Thursday, April 24, 2014

Astroturfing a modi-wave,Observations from Election express.


If Rahul Kanwal was given the task of astroturfing for Modi, can he do a better job than what he did today(23rd April 2014) ?
Let us analyze today's election express held at pheonix mall Bangalore. The full video is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j1uK1Yy-xU

Product Placement

@1:08 Rahul exit's the bus,  who's cutout do you see next to him? Yes Modi. No prizes for guessing the leader gracing the cutout on the left which the camera is trying very hand to avoid.

Is it a case of  Modi's 10,000 Crore media budget  VS AAP's Rs 0 media budget?

 What fraction of Modi's media budget was paid to Headlines Today? To what extent did it help pay for this designer bus program?


Another interesting fact about the cutouts was Modi's cutout had a lamp focused on it, Ensuring that the highlight is on Modi and not on the anchor, whereas Kejriwals cutout was kept in a dark corner....
Advertisement professionals can talk for hours about the subconsious effect of these tricks to make Modi standout among other contestants

Audience Strength

Now let us analyze the audience...

  •  How many of the audience members are wearing AAP cap's? more than 50%
    • Full disclosure, I and Manik went to the venue with some caps and distributed them to all those people who wanted to appear on the show wearing the AAP cap. We ran out of caps, so some of the audience is bare headed.
  • How many are wearing the congress caps?  A few here and there.
  • How many are wearing the BJP caps, Nil.
    •  Wait a minute No BJP caps? That's not correct. Actually there were BJP caps when Rahul entered the set, but before the start of the program BJP realized that they were massively outnumbered and quickly switched from being BJP supporters to "common men"


Initially the AAP supporters were distributed throughout the arena but the anchor requested them to all sit at one location. In hindsight It is easy to ignore you if you are isolated in your own ghetto.
Neutral members of civil society who sat in the AAP half were collateral damage in this process, As along with AAP Rahul ignored most of them.

Choosing your opponent

The program title says the fight is between Modi and Rahul, there is no mention of AAP even through AAP had a strong and visible support base in the arena,
 So Modi wants a safe seat, a safe interview and now even a safe opponent? Has he conceded that he cannot fight AAP and wants to keep on beating the dead dog called Congress/Rahul?
Is Modi's mantra "ignore the challenger Dara Singh and beat the small dumb kid"? That's not winning a fight! That's bullying!
Was ignoring AAP and focusing on his namesake, the only way Rahul could prove that Modi is winning?
No there was another trick,

A snap poll and camera trick

During the course of the event Rahul asks, "how many people think there is a Modi wave", and on cue the camera zooms in to focus on the two rows of BJP supporters in-order to indicate that everyone believes in a Modi wave. the next question of how many people believe that there is no Modi wave still focuses on the same audience, What happened to the rows and rows of AAP supporters? What happened to the front row of civil society members?

Ignore the voice of reason.

The few people like +Sridhar Pabbisetty of BPAC and Anubandh of AAP who tried to remind Rahul that
  1. India is a representative democracy and not a presidential system.
  2. The debate should be about the representatives and not some PM hopeful
were quickly ignored. And for the rest of the show we could see them with their hands raised in-order to get their point in but never getting the mike.
After all it is difficult to create a Modi wave if we start discussing points like the
  • Educational qualification of the BJP candidate (P.C Mohan is 12th pass even though BJP tries to delude itselves by calling him a graduate.),
  •  BJP candidates involvement in scams (Ananth kumar is synonymous with Rs 16,000 Crore HUDCO scam, Nira radia tapes, Lingustic divisions(karnataka's thackeray?) etc.).
  • Massive gains in personal assets of the BJP candidate in the past 5 years
Finally when Rahul moves the discussion to AAP he starts by informing the audience that AAP has already lost the battle and asks the volunteers to comment on it. When his point is refuted Rahul fumbles in his dialog and flees mumbling "but Manish said it", "but Manish said it".

I am at loss to understand if AAP is already lost why is BJP losing its cool and attacking AAP volunteers everywhere?

The one who first resorts to violence shows that he has no more arguments. --chinese proverb


The rest of the astroturfing event is spent talking with the BJP supporters and avoiding AAP as far as possible.

Questions that should have been asked but were not.

Since Rahul did not allow AAP to participate in the discussion, The nation wants to know,
  • Why is Rahul trying so hard to create a Modi wave?
  • If there is a Modi wave then, why is Modi trying to consolidate his position by destroying BJP from the inside(Advani, Jethmalani (father and son), Jaswanth etc.)
  • If BJP is left with Modi sycophants, And congress with Sonia/Rahul sycophants then, when the need arises, who will stand up and tell the emperor that he has no clothes.
  • If media joins this list of sycophants and starts astroturfing have they not lost their position of being the watchdog of democracy? Have they reduced themselves to lapdogs of Modi?
  • Is'nt AAP the only party today which is fielding true grass root leaders( Nina, Babu Matthew, Kallahalla, Hemant, Medha, Anjali, Subash and many many others.)? http://candidates.aamaadmiparty.org/
  • Which is better for democracy? one tall leader surrounded by a bunch of yes men? or multiple tall leaders capable of disagreeing with central leadership.

6 comments:

Anubandh said...

Hello Vijay! A wonderful depiction...this is what I wanted to say yesterday and could not get the chance to speak out, "Having actively participated in the election campaign for almost last two months, I can confirm that at least in Bangalore there's no Modi wave. If at all there's any wave of him then that is on Facebook, twitter and paid media and now even that is receding. Also nationally, how does one explain otherwise that the person who claims there's a wave in his name is contesting simultaneously from two seats? Why is he so afraid? Why are his interviews fixed? Why can't he face people's questions straight?
There's no doubt that India deserves a lot better than the likes of Modi or Rahul. People who are lobbying for a mass murderer Modi to be their PM clearly show a hopeless state of moral bankruptcy...thankfully, the common man has woken up and I really really hope that it is not too late...."

Unknown said...

Very true....

Yash said...

very well, i was also plannig to blog this, but then your blog said it all!!

Unknown said...

I saw on tv.. 1 BJP supporter lady replied to anand "I talk to lot of people, friends , family and there is wave" as if anand was sitting alone in AC room for past 3 months

Ganesh Papanna said...

I cud not agree more than what you have analysed here. It was a biased program.

Unknown said...

very thorough analysis Vijay!

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