Battle for Delhi – the Ground Game

Originally Published here on Niti Central.

While two major Opinion Polls have predicted a three way split in Delhi with a Hung Assembly one opinion poll has shown the BJP inching towards a majority. The Times-Now C-Voter Poll released yesterday had the BJP at 25, the Congress at 24 and the Arvind Kejriwal led upstart political party – the AAP at 18 seats.  A week back the CSDS Opinion Poll for Delhi Assembly had the BJP projected to net between 22 and 28 seats while the Congress bagging between 19-25 seats and an equal number for Kejriwal’s Aam Admi Party. The CSDS Poll had the BJP garnering 29% vote share while the Congress and AAP were expected to net about 27-28%, BSP and others getting between 7%-9%  each.

The BJP’s struggles in Delhi despite a three term incumbency against the Sheila Dikshit led Congress tell a story of how shifting demographics have challenged the Party in the past three election cycles. To better appreciate this phenomenon, consider the BSP’s performance in the 2008 Delhi Assembly Polls. While the BSP managed to win in only 2 seats it had a whopping 14% of the vote share, while the margin between the Congress and BJP in terms of vote shares was only 4%. Contrast this with the 2003 Delhi Assembly Polls when the BSP managed to get only 5.8% of the vote share and no seats. A further look at the 2009 Lok Sabha Polls shows that the BSP’s vote share went back to 5.3% even as the Congress consolidated its foothold in Delhi with a whopping 57.1% vote share in Delhi. Clearly there is a migrant working class demographic voter in Delhi with no hard loyalties and a transferable vote bank that has swung back and forth between the Congress, the BSP and other smaller parties while giving the BJP a pass it would seem, in election after election.

Looking at how static the BJP’s vote share has been in the last three election cycles – 35.2% in 2003 assembly polls, 36.3% in 2008 assembly polls and 35.2% in 2009 Lok Sabha Polls, one gets to appreciate the twin challenges for the Party. On the one hand it is threatened by the upstart political party led by Arvind Kejriwal chipping away at its stable middle class vote base. On the other hand is the working class, migrant swing voter who has remained out of reach to the BJP. In the 2008 Assembly Polls there were at least 30 battleground seats where the margin of victory was less than 10% of which 20 went to the Congress and the rest to the BJP barring one seat to the BSP.  The damage done by the BSP becomes apparent as one looks at the margin of loss and the vote share of the BSP in many of those seats. Looking beyond the close contest seats one sees the same pattern play out.

With Candidate Selection almost out of the way it is the ground game that will be the most crucial factor for the BJP in the weeks to come to win these battleground seats. An added dimension in this Delhi election will be the extensive use of Technology and Volunteers to make a difference on the ground.

The most significant example of using a combination of Technology and Volunteering to make an impact in an election comes from the United States. “Community Organizing” a catch-phrase that gained much political currency since the 2008 Presidential Election Campaign in the USA and the subsequent victory of Barack Obama has become the buzzword for how electoral contests are increasingly being turned in to micro-battles at the local community level.  The idea of “Community Organizing” is neither new nor was it unique to the 2008 Obama Campaign. Much of the novelty of the “Community Organizing” methods of the Obama Campaign perhaps lay in how Harvard Professor Marshall Ganz applied those methods to electoral politics. In August of 2007 the Huffington Post an Online Newspaper carried a report titled “Obama Field Organizers Plot a Miracle” with early impressions of how “Community Organizing” was making a difference to the Obama Campaign.

“If successful — aided by email lists, web tools and old school organizing techniques long missing in electoral politics — these organizers could rewrite the rules of presidential politics dramatically raise the profile of field organizing in the campaign world”

“this raises the possibility of a well-financed, volunteer-driven field operation on a totally unprecedented scale, reaching even into states that have been organizationally forgotten for decades by both parties.”

“But it will only happen if field leaders in at least at one presidential campaign can figure out how to blend effective, old-school field organizing techniques with the methods of “online organizing” that are only beginning to be discovered and understood”

Riding on the Marshall Ganz methods the Obama Campaign won two elections marking the evolution of Internet powered Community Organizing in electoral campaigns between 2007 and 2012.

It is interesting though that much of the study of Community Organizing has been in the context of Western Democracies between Social Reform Activist Groups and Faith based Groups.  Closer home the Sangh and the BJP have had their own version of Community Organizing or what Christophe Jaffrelot refers to as the “Sanghatanist method” in his book  “The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics – 1925 to 1990s”. Jaffrelot does not quite get around to explaining the nitty-gritties of how exactly the Sanghatanist method worked beyond the implantation of Shakhas. Most of Jaffrelot’s analysis of the effectiveness of this Organizing Technique is shallow as he explains away the growth of shakhas based on caste and other aspects Hindu Identity Awareness. One is hard pressed to find a comprehensive analysis of the mechanics by which the shakha grew within a Community to establish and sustain a support base of members and an ecosystem of sympathisers.  In his book “Religion, Caste and Politics in India” Jaffrelot identifies Agitations for Social Causes and localized faith based initiatives as two approaches by which mobilization would take place while analyzing at great lengths the constraints and limitations of the Sanghatanist method.

The most insightful commentary on how Community Organizing could work in the Indian Context comes from an anecdote shared by Narendra Modi on his own experience with his first election campaign from the 1980s when the BJP attempted to wrest control of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation. Lessons drawn from this campaign may be relevant to the Ground Game in Delhi as the BJP looks to combine Technology with Volunteering.

Rewinding back to that crucial period in the late 1980s when Narendra Modi made the most important career shift of his life from the RSS to the BJP one witnesses the first of many Political Victories scripted by Narendra Modi. According to Narendra Modi there were two critical elements to the Organizational Methods that were most effective during that maiden Election Campaign led by him. The first was the division of labor that made sure every karyakarta had a goal driven task and every task driven goal had a karyakarta assigned to it. The second aspect was ensuring there was an emotional-connect between the voters and the BJP’s campaign. Narendra Modi’s political genius was in being able to inspire that emotional connect by advocating a sense of Ownership in the voters of Ahmedabad towards their City and its Governance. It was not easy evoking that emotional connect. It did not happen over one mega rally or a single high voltage speech as has become commonplace these days with 24×7 Television and the Internet. Narendra Modi had to work his way hard to run his campaign through micro-engagement with both karyakartas and engaged citizens. He held a record 1000 Community level Group Meetings in Ahmedabad. As preparation for these 1000 Community level Meetings he also conducted a Training Course for 100 Karyakarta volunteers. The focus of the training was on what the karyakarta was expected to do at a Community level Group Meeting – what issues to highlight and what arguments to make?

This was a novel and radical move with the BJP veterans suspicious of his approach. After all having recently moved from the Sangh to the BJP he was still a novice in the world of electoral politics and many of those veterans did not take his methods very seriously while some were even critical of it. The Community level group meetings would comprise of citizen groups of 25 to 30 where articulate speakers would be encouraged to speak up on the issues concerning the city. To get women engaged in the process Narendra Modi came up with the ingenious idea of all Women’s Group Meetings to be held at a convenient time in the afternoons after 2pm. The BJP’s Campaign for that election to the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation assumed such a high profile that Narendra Modi even managed to persuade a reluctant Atal Bihari Vajpayee to come down for a Rally. Two public meetings at the ward level later even Vajpayeeji realized this was going to result in a landslide victory for the BJP as it went on to wrest the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation for the first time.

The blending of a structured process of volunteer training with volunteer mobilization and the establishment of an emotional local connect to create the ground conditions for a BJP victory was a trademark Narendra Modi template that he went on to repeat statewide. Little wonder that Narendra Modi in his most recent speeches has been using an allegory to explain the importance of Field Organizing ahead of the high stakes elections to the Delhi Assembly and other state assemblies. In his allegory Mr. Modi likens the boisterous enthusiasm of his young followers to that of a whirlwind as he goes on tell his audience that the momentum generated by a whirlwind would not be enough to inflate air into a flat cycle tire. Highlighting the need for a structured mechanism, Mr. Modi advises his ardent Young Supporters that just as one needs a pump to inflate a tire, even winning elections requires a structured mechanism to take sympathizers from the Voter Registration form to the Electronic Voting Machine.

It is these lessons in Field and Community Organizing that the BJP in Delhi will have to pay heed to in addition to its Technology Focus to get its ground game right in Delhi. These lessons could also make all of the difference between the Hung Assembly that most of the Opinion Polls are projecting and the all-important goal of a Simple Majority.