Two men, both around the same age group, took the responsibility of their respective political parties campaign on their shoulders and faced this election ending up with quite the opposite result. The only point that I see why Modi won landslide and MK Stalin lost so badly in this election is due to the way they devised their election strategy and in publicly showing their proximity to their parent organization during this election. Modi has deep rooted RSS leanings which he has never denied or even tried distancing himself from. The biggest plus on his side is that he did not let the RSS men in khaki trousers holding lathis (sticks) patrol the streets during election time and campaigning for votes, even in the Hindu heartland in the north. He was clear from the day one that he is not going to depend on RSS for data or planning and let his PR agency do the job in devising the action plan and implementing it. Even today, he demands functioning freedom from RSS leadership and has got the buy in through a team that can take care of his independence at work (its going good until today). On the other side, MK Stalin came to the elections trying to position himself as the next leader of DMK, didnt see any problem in Dravidar Kazhagam people like K.Veeramani and Suba.Vee and some so-called-rational think tanks and writers to speak in support of his campaign. DK and such speakers have done more harm than good by crying foul play in 2G case in which they claimed time and again that Kanimozhi and A Raja were implicated for political and casteist reasons respectively, all throughout the hot hot campaigning period. Topics like 2G should have never been brought back into the minds of voters and its DKs camp that spoke more about it than anyone else. DMKs founder, Perarignar Dr.Annadurai taught political lessons for his colleagues and followers about electoral politics way back in 1967, where he changed his tone and atheist sloganeering by calling One Race, Only One God which went on to convince even the theist voters to vote for DMK and even find a common ground and alignment with Chakravarthy Rajagopalachari (Rajaji). BJP lost it in 2004 and 2009 because they had this confusion in drawing a line on how and until where RSS would stand and dictate terms in party politics, which Modi has been able to successfully negotiate now. No matter what your ideology is, it really doesnt matter in electoral politics. If you are a fundamentalist and if you have no qualms in going with that identity to the voters, its going to bring you down in this era. Electoral politics is simply about how you can avoid the annoying and irritating old style campaigners from reaching the public for votes on your behalf. The khaki trousers can never be able to reach out to the fashion loving, forward thinking young India in the north. So does the black shirts in south. Modi prevailed, Stalin succumbed - A splendid lesson for the future election campaign planners.
Posted on: Tue, 20 May 2014 01:13:47 +0000
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