(Image source from: How Amit Shah conquered Uttar Pradesh for Modi})
There is no denying that prior to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Uttar Pradesh was BJP's Achilles Heels, with the party having little to no presence in India's largest state. But all that is history now.
Even before Narendra Modi was hailed BJP’s PM candidate, Man Friday Amit Shah got to work on swinging UP for him, leaving little doubt about the man or his message.
Indeed, it was an extensive, painstaking operation led by sound strategy. Uttar Pradesh, the combat zone caught in a maze of caste and communal quandaries, required an unusual approach if the BJP had to cinch a magnificent win. But the end results was way beyond magnificent: 71 out of the state’s 80 seats surpassed the expectations of the men who made it a reality.
The elections are over now and the men who manned the BJP’s workstations are back to their original workstations. But the story of how they conquered Uttar Pradesh is still being discussed with a degree of awe.
Trumping up the strategy and executing it to perfection is no less than a management lesson put in action. The 'mission Uttar Pradesh' originally kicked off on June 12, 2013, when Amit Shah, Modi's trusted lieutenant, flew to Lucknow to take the charge of the state unit of BJP. This annoyed many senior officials at the UP BJP head office in Lucknow’s Vidhan Sabha Marg.
But Shah wasn't deterred or bothered. Together with BJP president Laxmikant Bajpai, he traveled across the length and breadth of UP, identifying areas where BJP was lacking behind. On returning to Lucknow, Shah formed his own core team that included Sunil Bansal, former national convenor of Youth Against Corruption (YAC), Mahendra Singh, a BJP MLC and Ratnakar, another RSS functionary.
Hailing from Rajasthan, Bansal a senior RSS pracharak, was put in charge of fixing programmes of senior leaders. He had his own small team of bilingual, tech savvy people like Anil Singh, Arun Kant, Ashutosh and Devesh Kumar, and Abhishek Kaushik, a tech expert in social media.
The next task was to bring the BJP supporters and people influential in their respective areas together. It was on BJP supporters to inspire them to agree. A large number of individuals were contacted every day and were equipped with the wherewithal to take the message ahead.
By January-February, the ABVP cadre had joined the BJP task and started spreading the message with the Kalash Yatra. Sebsequently, the Modi Rath — mini-vans equipped with GPS, pictures, posters, audio and video of Modi’s message, songs and music — hit the streets of UP. Nearly 450 “Modi Raths” were sent to villages and small towns. It was then that slogans like “Abki baar Modi sarkaar, Modi aanewale hain, Hum Modiji ko laanewale hain, Achchhe din aane wale hain” started cementing BJP's foothold in the state. The formation of booth-level teams continued simultaneously.
The main idea was to get one worker to every booth. The Lucknow team amassed over four lakh such workers with their names, addresses, names of Lok Sabha and assembly constituencies, number of the booth they represented and mobile telephone numbers. Those who did not have mobile phones were given one with an activated and prepaid SIM card. Callers from the BJP call centre talked to these people every day, regardless of their location.
At the end of the day, their feedbacks were compiled as a comprehensive report and sent to Amit Shah. Every morning and evening, decisions were taken to sort out any problems.
For support staff, about two dozen young men were picked up from the Surya Foundation, a non-government organization established in 1992 by Jai Prakash Agarwal, Chairman and Managing Director of Surya Roshni Limited, having its office in Jhinjholi, Haryana, dedicated to raising national consciousness and social awareness among people, especially youth.
A 20-seater call centre was set up and manned by professional tele-callers who were personally trained by Kameshwar Mishra, convener of state BJP’s Investor Protection Cell and a former co-convener of the IT cell. He trained the group on the language, responses and patience they needed to execute the exercise.
The call centre profesionals called up district committee members and travelers on the Modi rath as well as booth level operatives and asked them about the problems, number of people contacted on a day, feedbacks or complaints, need for money or resources, availability of campaign material and programme for the next day.
Amit Shah and his team worked according to a plan , keeping the result in mind all the time. Their hardwork, diligence and discipline paid off in the end and how. Truly historic!
AW: Suchorita Choudhury
