Vajpayee to go regional with his e-message

Although the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) election campaign is officially still to be launched, buoyed by the success of the party campaign on SMS and mobiles, party poll managers say they will continue to leverage technology as an essential element in the campaign.

E-mails and statistics about the government's performance are already reaching mobile-phone users. In addition, the Prime Minister is going to record "Namaskar, main Atal Bihari Vajpayee bol raha hoon" in regional languages, followed by the message in Hindi or English.

"Imagine the excitement of a farmer in rural Punjab when his phone rings and the Prime Minister says "Sat sri akal, main Atal Bihari Vajpayee bolda paiyan," said a party poll manager.

The party's feedback is that 90 per cent of those who received the call,which began yesterday, listened to the whole message of 58-second duration.

The party office, which has been getting queries on how to replay these calls, plans to set up a call centre to guide people on how they can get the Prime Minister to call other people they know.

The message has been drafted by the party. But the Prime Minister had made changes, highlighting some elements and playing down others, BJP sources said.

"The Prime Minister spent about one and a half hour editing the draft. He included few things about women and children and underlined the importance of security.

He said, "In rural Bihar, people are being targeted on the basis of caste. So we must have something in the message that will make it meaningful for them,'" managers said.

The message is going to be changed in the next two days. The crux of the new message will be: not just the individual or the party, but the entire team.

"It is not going to be 'vote for me'. It is going to be 'we have taken India to new heights. But more needs to be done'."

Although the Prime Minister will hit the road only in April, the party will organise a string of events around him in the coming weeks that will keep attention focused on him.

The Indian cricket team, for instance, is going to call on Vajpayee to seek his blessings on March 10. What would have been a routine meeting will be widely publicised and although the Prime Minister himself has said he does not believe in cricket being politics or nationalism by another name, this is exactly the effect it will have.

The two sections that the BJP is making a conscious effort to reach out to are the minorities and women.

This is not limited to inducting Muslims in the party. An extra effort is being made to advertise in the Urdu media.

In order to break away from the stereotype of the 'BJP woman' represented by leaders like Sushma Swaraj and Mridula Sinha, the party will make an effort to create the idea of a modern and progressive BJP woman. Both these aspects will be conceptualised in the forthcoming campaign of the party.