Book review

Developing political brands

By
Randeep Wadehra

Political marketing in India by Dr. Arun Kumar

Regal Publications. Pages: xxi+397. Price: Rs. 1380/-

India may be the largest democracy in the world but it has lot of catching up to do in various democracy-related processes. For quite some time now a majority of India’s political parties have been basing their respective identities on borrowed ideologies. Even our saffron brigade draws inspiration from European ultra-rightists. The half-baked ideologies and absence of indigenous contribution has given birth to political mutants that are neither fully authoritarian like the formerly fascist Italy, the former Soviet Union and the present Communist China nor entirely seeped in democratic ethos and dynamism a la France, the UK and the USA. Consequently, most of our political parties – irrespective of their pretensions – are ideological hybrids that are personality driven but working under a liberal-democratic Constitution. This has created a disconnect in the sense that communication from party ideologues reaches the people easily but the feedback and new ideas from the common people seldom get back to the party bosses.
Not that attempts at forging distinct brands have not been made by major political parties in India. While designing their election campaigns they take into account the issues that are likely to catch public imagination during the elections. So, while the BJP led NDA coined the Shining India slogan the Congress came up with Congress ka haath aam aadmi kay saath. That the latter got thumbs up from the masses is history now. But, personalities managed to overshadow whatever attempts were made to have distinct brands. Vajpayee became a brand name for NDA in 2004 Lok Sabha elections. During the last general elections the INC highlighted Dr. Manmohan Singh’s clean image. There are inherent disadvantages of such personality based branding. For example, the Narendra Modi brand of Hindutva succeeded in Gujarat but its replication on the national stage cost the NDA dearly both in terms of votes and credibility. The average Indian – irrespective of his religious-linguistic-caste denomination – prefers peace and progress over mindless jingoism and destabilizing violence.

India is a country of breathtaking complexities – ethnic, linguistic, cultural and geographical. Socio-economically too there are humongous disparities – the stages of development range from pre-historic to ultra-modern, with a significant size of population wallowing in medievalism. This creates a situation where political marketing becomes a problem, viz., how do you reach out to them and address their concerns? Perhaps, this is the reason why most of our political parties have failed to come up with a sophisticated mechanism to deal with the complexities of democratic India. The Indian National Congress had tried one by becoming a platform for different aspiring groups in the country. However, over a period of time the experiment fizzled out. Now, the party leadership is once again trying to work out a model that will meet the hopes of people living in different parts of the country. But most other parties have become prisoners of vote-bank politics, which fosters feudal values whereby the praja listens to what the Raja says and not vice versa. This has led to absence of channels of communication that are vital for a party’s long term success. One of the fundamental pre-requisites of political marketing is free flow of communication between the top brass and the grassroots in order to build the political party’s image at the desired level. This, in turn, facilitates easy connect between people and political parties leading to easier understanding of what a particular party stands for.

In most western democracies a scientific and dynamic system of political marketing comprising research, branding, public relations, advertising and selling keeps the communication channels open between people and political parties. Incidentally, all these processes are very much a part of commercial marketing but have been adapted to democratic practices with extremely satisfying results. Thus, political marketing is all about influencing “consumers” (electorate) vis-à-vis political and other public issues, as well as candidates for various public offices. However, even though it uses techniques similar to commercial marketing political marketing is essentially about promoting an idea/ideology rather than product or service. The focus is on political parties, candidates an

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