THIS election is about personalities and charisma. It is compared to a presidential election in the US. This time the prime minister designate is already a known face, unlike the normal practice in a democracy where the party with the largest number of wins sits to confer on the selection of a prime minister. It was Modi right from the start of the BJP campaign when he launched himself with an electrifying speech at Lady Shriram College of Commerce in Delhi. That day Modi left his mark on the young listeners and on the media. The man seemed to have a road map for the development of India which was in sharp contrast to what was being experienced under the flagging, exhausted UPA regime and its silent, indecisive, tentative prime minister.
There are several reasons why the BJP won with a clear margin. In the 10 years that the UPA ruled India, so much had gone wrong. There was complete policy paralysis. The prime minister was reluctant to speak to the media. Being the most travelled prime minister to foreign countries the only time he addressed the media was on aircrafts and to select journalists who accompanied him on these jaunts. The one time he gave a press conference in Delhi and invited senior editors and journalists, that became the ‘news’ not the content of his colourless speech. In the last ten years the economy had slumped. India’s human development indicators had slipped below those of Sub-Saharan Africa and crony capitalism grew exponentially. Inflation hit the common person hard. They were driven to the BJP because there was no other option.
The BJP victory is unprecedented as the party has a clear majority, something that India has not experienced for 30 years. From a nondescript office in Gandhinagar, the capital of Gujarat, young men and women, some on sabbaticals from firms like JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank, worked on turning a fragmented parliamentary election involving 543 seats into a presidential-style referendum on Modi. He was the only face of the campaign. Since being named the BJP candidate in September last year, Modi has travelled 300,000 km and addressed 457 meetings. When he could not show up, he appeared as a hologram.
The media blitzkrieg of the BJP too worked overtime and it paid rich dividends. This was also the noisiest election as media tried to grab eyeballs with their raucous discussions, projections, speculations et al. Sections of the media seemed to have joined the Modi bandwagon. Indeed the role of the media in this election is something that requires introspection.
