Modi, media and the feel-good effect

(This is an analysis from our June 2014 print quarterly, 'Growing Media, Shrinking Spaces?'. See more from the issue here.)

As the last round of polling neared in India's general elections, dispirited workers of the Congress party seemed to spark momentarily to life. Hopelessly devoted to the dynastic principle – and fearful of exercising any manner of liberty not granted from the quarter referred to in hushed whispers as the 'high command' – volunteers in the cause of extending the Congress party's long lease on power responded with enthusiasm when the chosen standard bearer of the Nehru-Gandhi family, Rahul Gandhi, yielded some space to sister Priyanka on the campaign trail.

The rival Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seemed by then to be gathering an irresistible momentum towards victory, but was disinclined to take any risks. As reported in the media, the BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, eight days ahead of the final round of polling, called up trusted aide Amit Shah, who was manning his campaign office in the city of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh (UP). The quick confabulation yielded an immediate assessment and action plan: Priyanka was causing unanticipated turbulence in the march to victory and her momentum had to be broken. Modi would address a mass rally and carry his aggressive rhetoric on unending decades of Congress misrule to the very bastion of the Gandhi dynasty in the UP constituency of Amethi. Though put together as a response to unanticipated contingency, it was made to look an integral part of a long settled campaign plan.