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How the opposition can strike a balance between positive and negative campaigning

Neither Modi-bashing nor supporting Narendra Modi on everything will help the opposition. There's a third way.

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For many years now, even before Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister, non-Hindutva parties have struggled to find the right way to attack Modi. Should there be an all-out attack on him, or should he be completely ignored? Should he be attacked for Hindutva or for his claims on development? Or both?

The more you attack Modi, it is often said, the stronger he becomes. But then, he keeps getting stronger anyway.

Demonising Modi all the time is wrong, says Congress leader Jairam Ramesh. The criticism should be issue-wise, and not person-wise, agrees Abhishek Manu Singhvi.

This comes days after several Congress leaders openly disagreed with their party’s opposition to the Modi government’s move to dismantle the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

In a span of three years, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has gone from calling Modi a “coward and a psychopath” to agreeing with him on everything now. Kejriwal has faith that Modi will deal with the economic crisis, he says, sounding like a BJP CM. There has to be a sweet spot between the extremes.


Also read: Tears and laughter — what the opposition needs to beat Modi


Here are some principles to show a way out of the confusion.

1.  Positive campaign is the best campaign. What people want from any politician — whether they are in government or in opposition — is that they must solve people’s problems. People want politicians to ensure that trains run on time and flights land safely; inflation is in control and jobs are in plenty in the market; that the pot-holes are repaired and law and order is maintained. A politician must therefore persuade voters that s/he is the best person to solve their problems, deliver governance and prosperity. A politician has to show that s/he knows how it’s done, has a long-term vision for it, and her/his vision is the best.

Modi’s 2014 campaign was all about promises, showing people that he had a vision for development and asking them to believe that Modi could do it because he did it in Gujarat. Modi’s 2019 campaign told people that he was the guardian of the nation — the chowkidar. Arvind Kejriwal won a massive victory in Delhi in 2015 because he showed people that he had a vision for Delhi, where electricity and water would be affordable for all, and people must trust him because he was even willing to climb an electricity pole and break the law for their rights.

Political strategist Prashant Kishor’s post-2014 campaigns for Nitish Kumar, Amarinder Singh and Jagan Mohan Reddy have all been mostly positive — promising people jobs, sewage lines in villages, farm loan waivers and what not.

The biggest issue in India since demonetisation is unemployment. If an opposition leader had shown people that he knew how to solve the unemployment problem, and campaigned mainly around that, Modi could have been defeated in 2019.

Even today, the central focus of every opposition party should be to come up with plans, ideas, proposals, suggestions and promises on how jobs could be created. And they should go door-to-door telling people about these ideas. That’s how people might start saying, ‘This opposition leader could be better for us than Modi’.

This approach would be better than criticising Modi for unemployment, because people already know there’s high unemployment. What they are looking for from their politicians is not blame game but solutions. The central pitch of any politician, whether she is in power or in opposition, has to be a vision for the immediate future.


Also read: How India’s liberals and opposition can start winning the battle of ideas


2.  Positive campaigning is not the same as supporting the government. If opposition parties start supporting the Modi government on everything, why would people ever choose the opposition to replace Modi? If Arvind Kejriwal has to become a de facto NDA ally, why shouldn’t people directly vote for the BJP instead of the AAP?

We often hear the term “constructive opposition”. A constructive opposition is one that says it has better ideas than the government. That is not the same as mindlessly opposing the government all the time, or mindlessly supporting the government all the time.

So, what the Congress needed to have done on Kashmir all these years was to come up with a coherent plan to better “integrate” it with India. And, Arvind Kejriwal needs to tell the public how he would bring the economy out of its crisis situation, or what he intends to do for Delhi in the next five years if voted back to power. The idea is to show an alternative vision that contrasts with that of the government.

As Allama Iqbal said, “ḳhudī ko kar buland itnā ki har taqdīr se pahle / ḳhudā bande se ḳhud pūchhe batā terī razā kyā hai.” (Elevate yourself so high that even God, before issuing every decree of destiny, should ask you: Tell me, what is your intent?)


Also read: Opposition ‘deceit’ enabled Modi government to pass triple talaq bill, says Owaisi


3.  Don’t give up negative campaigning completely. In the 2007 Gujarat assembly election, Sonia Gandhi famously called Narendra Modi “maut ka saudagar” (merchant of death). After Modi won that election, the Congress party and the Delhi experts thought the phrase had backfired. As a result, they went silent on Modi, giving him a free pass to build a new image for himself.

It is foolish to not attack your opponent on his or her weak points. You have to hit where it hurts. Modi and the BJP hit out at the Congress for dynastic politics and corruption all the time. The best example of this problem is demonetisation. Stung by the public support for the BJP and the party’s stupendous victory in the Uttar Pradesh assembly election, the opposition just gave up talking about demonetisation. If it had linked rising unemployment to demonetisation, for instance, it could have reaped electoral rewards.

The issue is one of balance. How much positive, how much negative? Just like people want the hero to survive at the end of the movie, people prefer positive over negative. Positive campaigning must always substantially overshadow negative campaigning. This is the mistake Rahul Gandhi made with his “Chowkidar chor hai” campaign against Modi.

4.  Making negative points positively. One trick is to make even the negative points positively. If the opposition was to come up with ideas on employment generation today, it would automatically remind people of Modi’s failure to arrest rising unemployment.

In 2011, Arvind Kejriwal planned a mass movement against corruption. It made this negative point positively: by proposing a solution, the Lokpal. Modi’s 2014 slogan, “Achhe Din Aaney Waley Hain” (Good days are about to come) automatically suggested that the UPA-governed period was all about Burey Din, the bad days.


Also read: AAP to contest Maharashtra polls, says time for opposition to stand up to BJP-Shiv Sena


5.  Don’t get personal. Negative campaign backfires, particularly in India, when it gets personal. An attack that seems personal allows the opponent to play the victim card. This is where the opposition often fails. Kejriwal’s attacks on Modi backfired because they seemed personal (“a coward and a psychopath”).

The worst kind of personal attacks don’t yield results. The “snoopgate” controversy that targeted Narendra Modi in 2013-14, for instance, could not prevent him from getting a clear majority. The Indian voter doesn’t care about the personal life of politicians.

The BJP’s own campaigns against chief ministers (Akhilesh Yadav, Mamata Banerjee, Siddaramaiah, Prithviraj Chavan, Manik Sarkar etc.) have been very negative, as they wanted to heighten the anti-incumbency sentiment and present the BJP as a party promising “parivartan” or transformation.

These campaigns have usually avoided attacking the leader personally, but sometimes even Modi has made this mistake. He said in 2015 that Kejriwal was an anarchist who should join Naxals. The same year he said there was something wrong with Nitish Kumar’s ‘political DNA’. In both cases, Modi let his opponents make mistakes too.

When it’s election season, Modi’s researchers seem to trawl every news outlet to look for any insult against Modi made by the most insignificant Congress leader. Mani Shankar Aiyar has often made this mistake.

6.  Negative campaign is best done indirectly. Rahul Gandhi has been labelled incompetent and incapable but Narendra Modi himself has never called him that. Rahul’s image was created through social media jokes and memes that started circulating organically in 2013.

A lot of negative campaigning against the opposition (and anyone opposed to Modi/Hindutva) is carried out indirectly. Twitter trolls, fake news, WhatsApp groups, pliant media outlets and word-of-mouth campaigning are all used to carry out the BJP’s negative campaigning.

This helps Modi continue with his positive message, while the subterranean campaign heightens the contrast between the good Modi and the bad opposition. The idea is to show that people dislike the opposition, even as Modi talks positive about doing things to improve people’s lives.

Views are personal.

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13 COMMENTS

    • He is just a poor writer who is more like a courtier singing paeans than a serious political analyst capable of producing convincing substance. No trolls required for such superficiality.

  1. Congress dynasty had fooled hindus and muslims of this country since independence. Though this party clearly shows pro Muslims but anti Hindus because they think Hindu ideology is based on forgiveness while submission to the Muslim community comes as a savior to their ideology along with a huge vote bank. However, this party keeps fooling Muslims as well. They never cared about muslims for their real development. There is no doubt this party is indeed a traitor that can be seen from the visit of Mani Shankar Aiyar to Pakistan pleading and literally begging Pakistani constitution of support to Congress party right before their media recording. We also know who created the Kashmir issue and which party is responsible for it.

  2. Shivam Vij,
    Why do you think that people are stupid enough to not to recognize your hidden agenda.
    Wake up Shivam Vij. No one really cares about congress dynasty anymore. Rahul Gandhi and his ancestors’s contributions are only to support terrorism, bigotry, bias to one community, support to China, ignorance against Indian soldiers, snubbing of Army attack in Pakistan, Hindu culture and ethics, supporting corruption and riots. These are their achievements for this country but now they can’t fool indians any more.

  3. “Rahul Gandhi has been labelled incompetent and incapable but Narendra Modi himself has never called him that. Rahul’s image was created through social media jokes and memes that started circulating organically in 2013.”

    Be honest and introspect the reason for this label Shivam JI. When it comes to Rahul Gandhi don’t become Gandhi JI ke bandar, just like you don’t want others to become one.

  4. So far, I am unable to get impressed with any one article by Shivam Vij. Either he goes totally negative on certain subject matters or he is unable to communicate what he really want to say. Most importantly, while looking at the comment section, one can really understand how the author has failed in his narration and I feel that most of the time, there was big let down from Shivam. Better to take a break and come a fresh. By the way the article is about shunning the negativity. That can happen only if you pause and look at what you have done earlier. In continuity, we are more mechanic, not realizing the mistakes we make.

  5. The economy is the incumbent’s Achilles heel. If things continue like this, the Opposition could as well sit under the tree and wait for the apple to fall on its head. It really is that bad, despite the media being so mild. This is an issue on which the opposition has to be focused, relentless. As the column suggests, it needs to put some good ideas on how it will improve the situation. Recall that the Congress manifesto was well received. 2. On social issues and communalism, the Congress has to take a clear, principled stand, no playing games. Muslims, Dalits and Adivasis add up to a lot of votes. 3. Where the Congress / regional parties are in power, they have to deliver better governance and development than a majority of BJP CMs seem to be doing. There is a growing chasm between electoral success and performance, which is subject to the law of gravity. 4. Hang together or hang separately. That the Opposition must learn.

    • An ardent supporter of a sham, opportunistic coalition is scared to say that he wants a coterie of the corrupt to govern India. Your prediction for 2019 has already failed. Keep dreaming and praying that Shrimati Priyanka Gandhi JI will turn out to be your messiah.

      • Personally I have no strong political preferences / prejudices. If you kindly read my submission once again, there is disappointment over the economic situation, which affects everyone. Our support for a party should not make us oblivious to shortcomings in delivery, just as we should appreciate good work that is being done by any dispensation.

  6. Shivam should know that the simple question- how to give jobs to unemployed is the most difficult to answer. If he thinks any leader knew the answer but did not come forward to say so and instead went on Modi hate campaign, Shivam is too naive. Instead of turning another Kumar Ketkar for ThePrint, Shivam should take a break and think afresh.

  7. This guys is a looser. If he loves Iqbal, father of two nation theory, then he can go and settle in Pakistan where his moronic writing should be well received. I hate ThePrint to give him so much space that he is churning out nonsense every other second day… Kick him out. There should be some quality in journalism, not just the sheer propaganda…

  8. Modi is exactly where Indira Gandhi was in 1971. Economic slowdown can eventually take him down, but it will require someone like Jai Prakash Narayan. on national scene. i

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