Elections 2009

General elections are around the corner and I was wondering about the strategy that various parties would adopt to fight the next election. What I have noticed is that the Congress party has seriously under marketed their achievements. Unless you are a really curious person and wants to know about the achievements of the present government and is willing to spend quite a lot of time searching google or news paper archives for the information, its most likely that one would be clueless about what the present government did(apart from the Indo-US nuclear deal which by the way wont win you any elections any where).  

When the previous government was in power they used to have 100's of ads enlightening the people about their vision for India, India shining, golden quadrilateral etc etc. They had an excellent marketing strategy. They ensured that every single policy they had was highlighted. But after doing all that they lot the elections.  

Thus the question arise, is marketing really necessary for wining elections? I started following various social issues only about 8-10 years ago and hence my knowledge about the stuff that happened before that is limited. I strongly believe that a right marketing strategy would be crucial for winning an election. A huge majority of Indian voters do not have televisions and cables.  One of the main reasons why BJP's strategy did not pay of is that they just concentrated on the small minority of voters(people with TV and stuff, basically the people who belong to the middle class and above), another reason being that the people were appalled with their communal/ hate politics that they had adopted. 

I haven’t seen any ads of the congress government, even if there are its very few. As the cable TV viewing public is a small minority of the Indian voters, even if they don’t come up with any ads it really doesn’t matter. The various debates that happen in TV will get the message through to the urban voter. What really matters is if they are getting their message through to the ruler voter who is going to make or break their election. 6 or 7 months back i would have said that the congress had no chance in hell of winning or even competing in the coming election. Thanks to the various antics of the BJP the congress is back in the running. People in India do not want violence and they certainly wont support any party that is the root cause of this violence.  

Marketing remains the key in this election also. The mantra of marketing is politics is same as in the normal marketing.  Identify your target customers (voters), ensure that your message is received by the loud and clear. I do not think that the congress is going to win this election with a majority no matter what they do now. What they can do now is ensure that their policies and vision publicized in the right places. The congress came into power on the votes of the aam aadmi and they must ensure that the aam aadmi would trust them and believe in their policies once again for coming into power

I had completely ruled out the left from the 2009 elections but thanks to the trinamool unfortunately that is not going to happen. The happenings of the past few months have ensured that a clear winner won’t be there after the elections. What happens in the coming months will be very crucial. History has shown us that Indian elections are unpredictable. This one will be no different.