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“We believe 160 of the 543 constituencies are digital seats. What happens on the internet will have an impact on these,” Gupta told Business Standard, adding that traditional campaigning tools, too, would be used in these places. “Digital will be an amplifier and a booster in these areas.” Deep data analytics, driven by the number of people using mobile phones, internet and the social media, has been used to classify every seat, Gupta said. “Our engagement is not two months old; we have been planning for this election for three years.”
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BJP is specifically targeting Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Delhi and Punjab. Compared with the national average, these have higher digital connectivity. However, the party is less confident of the digital media impact in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, which have lower internet and mobile penetration. Though Kerala and Tamil Nadu have high internet reach, the party acknowledges there are few buyers for its ideology in these states.
It is widely believed that digital media, especially the platforms like social media, will play a key role during the 16th Lok Sabha elections in 2014. Though the country’s internet penetration has barely crossed the 10-per-cent mark, India already has the third largest internet population in the world — after the US and China.
Mahesh Murthy, founder of digital brand management firm, Pinstorm, said his firm was one of the two organisations which identified the so-called digital constituencies. “Our analysis was based on the metric of Facebook users who were likely to be on the voting list and could be easily contacted.” Murthy’s firm also focused specifically on the seats where last general elections had been won by a small margin and, so, could be easily swayed the other way through use of the digital media. “BJP is more aggressive than the Congress. However, BJP did a lot of digital media campaigning in the previous elections as well. They chose the media very methodically but their message was wrong. So, let’s see what they come up with this time,” Murthy says.
Taking cognisance of the fact that large parts of the country remain outside the web world, the party is also building digital tools like recorded video and audio speeches of top leaders which will be relayed on mobile phones.
The process was initiated at the Rewari rally of BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi.
“People in the villages told us they wanted to hear Modi but couldn’t because of the absence of electricity and internet. So, we have now enabled a way to play Modi’s speeches on mobiles,” Gupta said, giving an example of one of the tools the party was working on. BJP also started distributing the tweets by Modi, who has 2.4 million followers on Twitter, through text messages for those who didn’t access the micro-blogging site. There are many more to come, including a tool that will enable people in villages to watch video speeches as well. But, Gupta won’t share more details of the project yet.
And, to drive the party’s ideology — both on the internet and offline — BJP is in the process of building a network of 10,000 volunteers. Party managers said the profile of the volunteers was varied — professionals, industrialists, young students, engineers, and even housewives. At present, the party has around 100 core volunteers and a national party workers’ team of around seven, besides three national conveners, to oversee the implementation of the party’s IT strategy.
Gupta says that party gets many suggestions from its volunteers and they are also a good distribution channel. “If 20,000 to 30,000 people start distributing content, it gets viral much faster.” Meanwhile, even though the ruling Congress-led coalition has been late in building its digital media presence, the grand old party of India is also bucking up and is in the process of roping in a digital agency for its own campaign.
