In the sweltering heat of eastern Uttar Pradesh, the Bharatiya Janata Party seems to have become somewhat sanguine. After ensuring a huge turnout when the party’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi came to town to file his nomination papers, its campaigning efforts appear to have gone quiet, at least beyond the saffron-clad volunteers handing out Modi-for-PM topis.
This perception might just be held in comparison to the Aam Aadmi Party, which appears to be everywhere — knocking on doors, waving jhaadus in the streets, hosting nukkad sabhas and holding roadshows.
Meanwhile, local leaders in the BJP have all started to believe, as one local journalist put it, that they are all Modis themselves, ready to rule the roost. A senior leader, in fact, openly acknowledged that the BJP’s campaign drive had slowed down, but insisted that the massive nomination crowd and coverage gave them a huge head start and now all they have to do is wait for Modi himself to return for three days of campaigning later in the week.
But that doesn’t mean there’s no one out there spreading the Modi gospel.
1. Rajnish Singh is a confident young 29-year-old with a fancy haircut, designer shades and no sign of khaki shorts. He’s also as confident as they come, a trait that tends to be common to most members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
The BJP might have gone into cruise control, but the RSS is still mobilising its support base. Every morning, groups of local RSS members are taken out to campaign in areas that have always been important for the BJP. The RSS — with its local cadres — tries to ensure that its members can head to their offices after having conducted one community meeting in the morning.
A few people have interpreted the RSS insistence on campaigning in BJP strongholds as a sign that Modi’s candidacy is in enough danger to warrant such a response. But Singh has a much more convenient, persuasive, response to this.
“Let’s say your close relative is hosting a wedding, and he doesn’t come to invite you personally,” Singh said. “When the date comes, are you going to turn up? Instead, you’re more likely to say ‘they just assumed? They took me for granted.' So what we do is invite people to come celebrate at the booths with us.”
Sitting in a builders’ office just down the road from the Modi’s campaign headquarters, Singh is also open about their approach to the AAP, which has seen several instances of fights and accusations that they set out to deliberately disrupt peaceful meetings. “They get scared seeing us, a few of our people. They know that if they don’t do things right, if they lie when they’re talking, they’re asking to be slapped.”
2. It’s rare that someone working for Narendra Modi will openly acknowledge that things haven’t all been great. Instead of the usual ‘I’m just happy to work for the country’ response, Manish Dubey seems to have a more realistic answer: “I’m an engineer who left a good job to come to this,” he said. “My parents are unhappy with my decision, my wife is unhappy with my decision. She has given me one year, but I have to return after that…and you also get used to a certain way of living.”
Dubey is sitting in a dull office just down the road from Rajnish Singh’s and not too far from the official Narendra Modi campaign centre either. It is officially the BJP’s main office for Varanasi, yet little seems to be happening. Dubey, co-convener of the party’s IT cell, however, insisted that their work was continuing unabated.
“We are putting in place a software that can be used on phones or computers even offline, which will allow our booth agents to find the polling booth of everyone who has registered to vote,” he said. “Alongside this we have been going out and helping people ensure they will come out on election day.”
The IT cell works separately from the rest of the party. It doesn’t give space to politician-type aspirants, preferring instead to focus on those who will complete their tasks, and it is not bound by the hierarchy that sometimes imperils the rest of the party.
“Wherever I went to campaign, to help people register, I didn’t call the local MLA or the BJP person. We work separately — not for the party, just for Modi,” Dubey said. “Our directions come from Lucknow, but often after our reports have gone to Ahmedabad and then been relayed.”
While the RSS has focused on ensuring turnouts in the traditional BJP locales, the IT cell — with its "Mission272" volunteers — has had the freedom to head into areas with communities that wouldn’t normally vote for them.
“We’ve gone into areas with Yadavs, Patels and Kurmis, and I think over the last few months we’ve covered at least two lakh voters from non-BJP families,” Dubey said.
With elections around the corner, though, the year-long time limit set by his wife will be expiring very soon, but he isn’t sure what will happen next. “They all want me to go back to my job — there is no money here, in fact, I have spent all my savings probably on just fuel alone. But I don’t know. Let’s see the results of the elections first.”
3. Why would a person from Uttar Pradesh who lives in Mumbai be able to convince their family in Varanasi that they should vote for Narendra Modi?
“I get that question a lot and I have a simple answer,” said Amarjeet Mishra, a general secretary of the BJP’s Mumbai unit. “There are plenty of our people from UP working in Mumbai, like myself. Sometimes entire villages are run based on the money that is being sent from the city.”
Mishra has, of his own accord, rounded up a bunch of UP migrants in Mumbai to accompany him to Varanasi to campaign for Modi. Although they fit in with the regular BJP campaigning later in the day, in the mornings Mishra takes them to meet their own extended family members to drive home the point that they should be voting for Modi.
“These are the people whose voice counts, because they are the ones sending the money. Plus, they live in Mumbai; they might be small there, but here that makes them important. They have seen more of the world, and their experience matters," Mishra said. "When that person says vote for Modi, it becomes much more than just a campaign slogan."
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This perception might just be held in comparison to the Aam Aadmi Party, which appears to be everywhere — knocking on doors, waving jhaadus in the streets, hosting nukkad sabhas and holding roadshows.
Meanwhile, local leaders in the BJP have all started to believe, as one local journalist put it, that they are all Modis themselves, ready to rule the roost. A senior leader, in fact, openly acknowledged that the BJP’s campaign drive had slowed down, but insisted that the massive nomination crowd and coverage gave them a huge head start and now all they have to do is wait for Modi himself to return for three days of campaigning later in the week.
But that doesn’t mean there’s no one out there spreading the Modi gospel.
1. Rajnish Singh is a confident young 29-year-old with a fancy haircut, designer shades and no sign of khaki shorts. He’s also as confident as they come, a trait that tends to be common to most members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
The BJP might have gone into cruise control, but the RSS is still mobilising its support base. Every morning, groups of local RSS members are taken out to campaign in areas that have always been important for the BJP. The RSS — with its local cadres — tries to ensure that its members can head to their offices after having conducted one community meeting in the morning.
A few people have interpreted the RSS insistence on campaigning in BJP strongholds as a sign that Modi’s candidacy is in enough danger to warrant such a response. But Singh has a much more convenient, persuasive, response to this.
“Let’s say your close relative is hosting a wedding, and he doesn’t come to invite you personally,” Singh said. “When the date comes, are you going to turn up? Instead, you’re more likely to say ‘they just assumed? They took me for granted.' So what we do is invite people to come celebrate at the booths with us.”
Sitting in a builders’ office just down the road from the Modi’s campaign headquarters, Singh is also open about their approach to the AAP, which has seen several instances of fights and accusations that they set out to deliberately disrupt peaceful meetings. “They get scared seeing us, a few of our people. They know that if they don’t do things right, if they lie when they’re talking, they’re asking to be slapped.”
2. It’s rare that someone working for Narendra Modi will openly acknowledge that things haven’t all been great. Instead of the usual ‘I’m just happy to work for the country’ response, Manish Dubey seems to have a more realistic answer: “I’m an engineer who left a good job to come to this,” he said. “My parents are unhappy with my decision, my wife is unhappy with my decision. She has given me one year, but I have to return after that…and you also get used to a certain way of living.”
Dubey is sitting in a dull office just down the road from Rajnish Singh’s and not too far from the official Narendra Modi campaign centre either. It is officially the BJP’s main office for Varanasi, yet little seems to be happening. Dubey, co-convener of the party’s IT cell, however, insisted that their work was continuing unabated.
“We are putting in place a software that can be used on phones or computers even offline, which will allow our booth agents to find the polling booth of everyone who has registered to vote,” he said. “Alongside this we have been going out and helping people ensure they will come out on election day.”
The IT cell works separately from the rest of the party. It doesn’t give space to politician-type aspirants, preferring instead to focus on those who will complete their tasks, and it is not bound by the hierarchy that sometimes imperils the rest of the party.
“Wherever I went to campaign, to help people register, I didn’t call the local MLA or the BJP person. We work separately — not for the party, just for Modi,” Dubey said. “Our directions come from Lucknow, but often after our reports have gone to Ahmedabad and then been relayed.”
While the RSS has focused on ensuring turnouts in the traditional BJP locales, the IT cell — with its "Mission272" volunteers — has had the freedom to head into areas with communities that wouldn’t normally vote for them.
“We’ve gone into areas with Yadavs, Patels and Kurmis, and I think over the last few months we’ve covered at least two lakh voters from non-BJP families,” Dubey said.
With elections around the corner, though, the year-long time limit set by his wife will be expiring very soon, but he isn’t sure what will happen next. “They all want me to go back to my job — there is no money here, in fact, I have spent all my savings probably on just fuel alone. But I don’t know. Let’s see the results of the elections first.”
3. Why would a person from Uttar Pradesh who lives in Mumbai be able to convince their family in Varanasi that they should vote for Narendra Modi?
“I get that question a lot and I have a simple answer,” said Amarjeet Mishra, a general secretary of the BJP’s Mumbai unit. “There are plenty of our people from UP working in Mumbai, like myself. Sometimes entire villages are run based on the money that is being sent from the city.”
Mishra has, of his own accord, rounded up a bunch of UP migrants in Mumbai to accompany him to Varanasi to campaign for Modi. Although they fit in with the regular BJP campaigning later in the day, in the mornings Mishra takes them to meet their own extended family members to drive home the point that they should be voting for Modi.
“These are the people whose voice counts, because they are the ones sending the money. Plus, they live in Mumbai; they might be small there, but here that makes them important. They have seen more of the world, and their experience matters," Mishra said. "When that person says vote for Modi, it becomes much more than just a campaign slogan."