New Delhi: The Congress underestimated the “Modi factor” and the “Modi cult”, which led to the drubbing it received in the Lok Sabha elections, according to former union minister Shashi Tharoor.
Tharoor, who won the Thiruvananthapuram seat for the third time with an increased majority of nearly one lakh votes, said the Congress’ flagship poll promise, ‘NYAY’, did not work anywhere as it was announced quite late.
He also said Congress president Rahul Gandhi should lead the party in Parliament, but maintained that he would do so if given the opportunity.
The Modi factor
“I think the real issue was that there was a Modi factor there that we had underestimated. You see, we are hearing now that voters were saying to journalists in Rajasthan, ‘we voted against Vasundhara, but we’re voting for Modi’,” Tharoor told ThePrint.
“That’s the kind of thing that perhaps we didn’t fully appreciate — that the Indian voter has really learnt to differentiate between national elections and state elections.
“Voters decided that as far as the national government is concerned, they wanted Modi. Let’s face it, there’s been this personality cult built up over five years, with assiduous propaganda, nine lakh WhatsApp groups, how many Facebook and Twitter posts… The government admitted in an RTI a few weeks before the elections that Rs 5,600 crore of taxpayer money was spent to hype the government’s achievements and Mr Modi’s achievements.”
Tharoor called the BJP a “great marketing agency”, but said while it may have been able to “sell” Modi nationally, its strategy would not work again in the upcoming assembly elections, and the Congress would emerge as an alternative.
“The BJP is a great marketing agency… It has sold the product, the product is Mr Modi of the 56-inch chest, the muscular strong man (who) is going to keep India safe from all dangers and enemies within and without. That kind of message will not wash with educated professionals, but clearly has made a big impact on a large numbers of ordinary voters, and they have clearly voted for that,” he said.
“Now, when it comes to forthcoming state elections, that isn’t going to work because you can’t sell it twice. You can sell Mr Modi for Delhi, but you can’t sell him for Haryana and Jharkhand.”
The failure of NYAY
Contrary to the claims of the Congress’ data analytics team, Tharoor said NYAY or Nyuntam Aay Yojana (minimum income scheme) didn’t work enough anywhere “simply because I think it came out a bit late”.
He stressed on the fact that if the scheme would have come at least six months before the elections, it could have been a “game-changer”.
“It might have been a game-changer. But by the time it came out, we were already into the election campaign, and according to polls and studies, I think we only reached about 50 per cent of the electorate, and they may have been the wrong 50 per cent,” he said.
“They must have been those who read the newspapers, the urban professionals and so on, the ones who, for the most part, are going to be paying for NYAY. But we didn’t reach the 20 per cent below the poverty line, or the ones who were going to benefit from NYAY. And that is partially because we didn’t have enough time to do that.”
How he won Thiruvananthapuram
Asked what worked for him personally at a time when the Congress could win just 52 seats in the Lok Sabha, Tharoor said there was the undoubted fact that a minority consolidation took place. “By which I mean that the fear of the BJP coming to power in Delhi and Thiruvananthapuram being represented by a BJP MP was very palpable in many parts of our constituency.
“While we rightly don’t ask the religion of the people voting, the general perception is that above 75 per cent of the Muslim community and perhaps close to that from the Christian community may have voted for me, in addition to a sizeable number of Hindus,” he said.
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