Political Frameworks — Part 1
In this series of three articles, I will be putting down three frameworks which can be used to design political strategies. The overall Political Strategy Management Science can be divided into two broad categories: Short term and Long term. While former is concerning specific elections and developing strategy for that, the later is about developing strategies for individual political career and for an entire political party. I would try to put my frameworks into action by applying them and giving examples within the context of Indian Politics. In this first article, I have explained the framework for individual long term political strategy.
Long term strategy for individuals
I have the 3R-5S framework for this. The 3R is condensed version of 5S. The reason for brining in the 3R along with 5S is to bring in a order among different parts of the strategy. What this basically means is this — Unless you get the 1st R right, there is no use of the 2nd and 3rd R’s. Please note that the assumption here is that the individual wants to build an active front-end political career which means, facing people, contesting elections, and making laws.
The 1st R: Relevant
The first step in building a political career is to become Relevant for the public. The 2S’s which come under this are:
Soundness: A political leader must be perceived as being sound — mentally, politically, administratively, morally and physically. If a person in public life is perceived to be unsound, they would become irrelevant for the public. On the other hand, if that person demonstrates right behavior by performing good in positions of responsibility, by leading people’s movement, by supporting causes in public interest, etc. it improves their perceived soundness and relevance. In India, the caste/religious/linguistic identity of an individual is a key part of political soundness. If you are a regional level politician and belong to a minority caste/religion/linguistic group, you would most likely start-off as being politically unsound for a large majority of electorate by default — because the majority would assume that your policies will be biased towards the minority group from which you belong.
Rising from a very humble background to becoming CM and PM gives Modi a high perceived mental soundness. He is also perceived to be highly sound administratively (Gujarat Model) while Rahul Gandhi is perceived to be highly unsound mentally (“Pappu” tag), as well as politically (Muslim appeaser and corrupt). It is very important for Narendra Modi to have a degree (even if it is fake) to avoid comparison of his “mental-soundness” with foreign-educated, yet “pappu” Rahul Gandhi on the basis of education.
Modi associating himself with Yoga, riding atop tank, etc. is his attempts to demonstrate that he is physically fit compared. On the other hand, we saw Rahul Gandhi share videos of him practicing martial arts and doing one-handed pushups!
The weakest area for Modi in this aspect is moral-soundness, owing to Gujarat riots and his habit of distorting facts and making personal attacks during election campaign. Frequent mandir-visits, garbage picking, washing feet of sanitation workers, feeding peacocks, publicly visiting his old mother, etc. are all attempts to prevent the morally-unsound tag stick to him (in addition to other objectives of these actions, obviously).
Rahul Gandhi is trying to shed his “Pappu” tag by publicly engaging with world renowned technocrats, and picking up economic issues above everything else. The increase in mandir-visits by Gandhi is an attempt to lose his politically-unsoundness among majority of Hindus.
It must be noted that Narendra Modi is viewed as highly politically unsound by the Muslim population of India because of his Hindu appeasement politics, but Modi would hardly complain about it or change this, given more than 80% of Indians are Hindus.
Soundness is the most fundamental piece of an individual’s political career. Politicians in power usually discredit opposition leaders and other emerging leaders by spreading message (true or false) about their moral and political (un)soundness.
Kanhaiya Kumar — an emerging student leader has been effectively tagged as anti-India by the ruling establishment, thus making him politically and morally unsound for a long time for a large population.
Signal Strength: It is not enough for politicians to be sound. They must also reach a position where they have strong signal strength. Signal strength means the reach that the words of a politician have.
In most democracies, including India, a politician needs to build relationships with media houses in order to get the required reach, but if politicians are able to do something significant and impactful, they become difficult and costly to ignore.
Sometimes, this signal strength comes by default. The best example being Rahul Gandhi. Being the son, grand son and great grand son of former Prime Ministers of India, words and actions of Rahul Gandhi would always have strong reach. Even the most right-wing of media houses cannot ignore him for long.
In some cases, this signal strength comes from one’s position in their respective political parties. JP Nadda is not very popular among the masses, not even among the BJP members, but by the virtue of him being the BJP president, he has an immense signal strength. There are other ways to build signal strength as well:
- By leading protests and movements in public interest,
- By regularly expressing opinions on important and relevant issues,
- By extensively connecting with the grassroots,
- Join a political party and reach leadership positions, etc.
Arvind Kejriwal is a good example of someone who acquired strong signal strength in a very small span of time. First he led the anti-corruption movement alongside Anna Hazare, then he formed his own party and the biggest of all-fought Delhi elections and became Chief Minister in the very first attempt. All this in just about 2 years time.
Sometimes, one acquires great signal strength by strong one-off events. The most recent example being Kanhaiya Kumar — who became very popular and well known after the JNU incident.
Signal strength is the 2nd most important part of an individual’s political career. This is one of the reason parties and leaders try to control the media houses and stay in the limelight, so that the signal strength of rival parties/leaders can be cut down, while their own can be amplified.
Final comment on Relevance: Relevance comes from soundness and signal strength. Only one without the second, will slowly erode away the relevance. One might have soundness and then acquire signal strength, others might have signal strength but struggle to prove themselves sound. While some might lack both and start from scratch, building perceived soundness and signal strength simultaneously.
The 2nd R: Ready
Politicians who are relevant to public would not be chosen as their representative if they are not perceived to be ready for the role. And this readiness comes from Support — the 3rd S of the 5S framework.
Support: Politicians cannot be successful without an extremely strong network of people who can support them politically, financially and legally. If a politician is perceived to be alone, without influential supporters, s/he will not be perceived to be ready to plunge into the tough world of Politics. Electorate realize that Politics is tough and that it takes away a large proportion of the elected representative’s time. They also realize that one person can not administer a large population alone.
Without a strong base of admirers, followers and supporters which is clearly and actively visible to public, even an extremely sound and popular person would fail in politics.
Public speeches are not just a delivery of message but more importantly a show of strength — a show of leader’s support among masses. A sound, popular leader with able supporting hands is almost everything a voter needs to consider voting for him/her. An average voter does not want to waste his/her vote. If the support for politicians is not visible, they will not be perceived as a likely winner and hence would lose votes.
The garlanding of leaders during public meetings by other popular leaders using a huge garland is a sign of unconditional and full support to the leader. This sends across a strong message to the electorate that the leader is not alone but has a team of devout supporters who will help him/her politically, legally and administratively and hence the leader can work for the people effectively. The photo-ops with influential people like sportsman, businessman, spiritual leaders also helps build this narrative.
One example of a leader who was sound and popular but miserably failed in politics because of lack of visible support is Irom Sharmila of Manipur. She was very popular among people of her state (signal strength) and positively viewed (soundness) owing to her 16 years of fast protest against AFSPA (although many were angry at her for giving up by ending the fast). She floated her own political party in 2016. In the state elections of 2017, she was often seen campaigning alone in her cycle or with a very small group of people. She failed to clearly display her political acumen and ability to mobilize people. She got a mere 90 votes in the constituency she contested — the least of the 5 candidates and 0.33% of total votes polled.
The 3rd R: Revered
One can win regional elections by being sound, popular and with an influential support base. But in order to win over a larger population at states and national levels, that is not enough. One has to rise above being good enough to becoming kind of a “savior” and “revolutionary” to command the love, respect and blind support that is required at that level. Here are the 2S’s which bring reverence for a political leader:
Strategy: A political leader must be identified with a distinctive, powerful and promising strategic direction that s/he wants to lead the electorate into. This is where ideology comes in. What is the leader’s idea of a developed society? What is his/her plan to reach to that point? Is that plan realistic and believable? Does the leader has in him/her the capability to achieve this? These are some of the questions in electorate’s mind that the leader must have a positioning for. S/he must have a personal definition of successful society and how that can be achieved.
The charisma of a leader’s developmental strategy and the believable promise of the utopia is what gives rise to respect and reverence for the leader.
There can not be better examples than Narendra Modi and Arvind Kejriwal, both of whom have positioned themselves based on their distinct personal vision and strategy of development. Modi’s strategy is at national level and hence, complicated with several dimensions to it — Getting India rid of appeasement politics, solving the big old challenges first, taking the risk of making big economic reforms, dealing with enemies with strength, establish India as a super power, taking India back to cultural golden age, etc. All these dimensions were and still are very appealing to the Indian electorate. If actually executed effectively, these strategies can usher in the “ache din” that according to Modi, Indians have been denied for long by Congress.
On the other hand, Kejriwal’s strategy is at state level and hence, very different. It is simple but catchy — single minded focus on the basics of life: education, healthcare, water, electricity, etc. For Kejriwal, the target is and always has been the aam aadmi — the common man. By focusing on quality and affordability of basic services, Kejriwal has been able to cut across caste, religious and political lines even in the absence of so-called “grand” schemes.
Style: At the end of the day, an average electorate in a highly diverse and developing country like India needs to see a distinctive style of communication, working, living, etc. in his/her leader. The electorate must feel attracted and inspired by leader’s way of life and work. They must feel a sense of pride about the leader being their representative. A leader may be sound, popular, with huge support base, and with a great strategy; but with the lack of charisma and distinctiveness, the fan base would slowly fade away. When the target audience is in millions, the content alone is not enough, the packaging too has to be spot on.
No one has proven this better than Narendra Modi. The way he would surprise the nation with big announcements at 8:00 PM, the car he travels in which would have a flash light near his seat to make his face glow, the beautiful turbans he wears every Independence and Republic day, the way he would pose on top of tanks, with automatic rifles, the use of sarcasm to take on his opponents, his style of engaging with the audience during public meetings, the use of Star Wars dialogue while sharing stage with Coldplay, the “ghar mein ghuske maarenge” dialogue, etc.
On the other hand, the perfect example of a political leader who almost completely ignored this aspect is Dr Manmohan Singh. His silent constant pitch communication style, simple dressing, predictable administration style, etc. give rise to an impression of a “usual” politician. He is super-relevant, somewhat ready (somewhat because he was under the control of Sonia Gandhi), but not as much revered as Narendra Modi, mainly because of his Style. It would not be surprising to see Arvind Kejriwal slowly changing his dress code and tone down his image of “aam aadmi” in future — when he would start pitching himself as a national leader (again), in order to match the charismatic standard of Modi that Indians have now gotten used to. As of writing this article, Arvind Kejriwal has already switched from wearing his muffler around the head to wearing it around his neck.
And this 5th S is why I think that the biggest bet of BJP post 2014 is going to fail. BJP chose Yogi Adityanath as the CM of the most electorally important state of India. And it came as a surprise to biggest political pundits. Many believed (and still believe) that BJP wants to take the Hindutva narrative to the next level in the post-Modi era by projecting Adityanath as the PM candidate — hence giving him theopportunity to lead UP to build the “UP Model” story in line with “Gujarat Model”. But I personally think that “Style” of Yogi Adityanath does not inspire the youth. A forward looking modern youth would find it very hard to relate with a saffron wearing, suddh Hindi speaking and most importantly, extremist saint as his/her leader.
The modern youth does not just want its political leaders to be good, it also wants them to be right mix of modernity, culture, aggression and humor with whom they can feel connected and identified proudly. If a leader does not present himself/herself in a stylish, dynamic and charismatic way, the youth of country would not feel hopeful about the future with the leader in charge.
Final thoughts: Every thing in Politics is relative. The soundness of an individual politician depends on that of the rivals. It has to be dynamically re-structured and presented in different ways depending on the competitors’ own narrative and their reactions to yours. Same goes for other 4S’s as well. One needs to continuously fine tune and improve his/her 5S strategy to cut through the large clutter of Politics and emerge as an unique and powerful value proposition for the public.
I hope this framework would help aspiring politicians to structure there strategic thinking. Any feedback or suggestion or alternate view points are highly welcome. 😊
