'Focus on big picture was Modi's brief'

Narendra Modi brie-fed me sometime in May, just before he was leaving for South Korea. Then, he was in the middle of his campaign, crisscrossing the state with scores of mahila sammelans, van-bandhu sammelans, sagar-khedu sammelans.

Through these sammelans, he addressed millions. On an average occasion, an audience of 50,000 or more would come to hear him. For example, he had addressed over 28 lakh women, cumulatively over two months, even before the monsoon set in. The brief I got from him was a tight one. "I have delivered in the last five years more than any CM, anywhere, ever," he said. "I want another five years to make Gujarat an international case study in good governance."

There were some stunning facts to go with it. Value of farm-output had grown four times. School drop-out rate was down to 3% from over 40%. All villages, without exception, were getting 24 hour, 3 phase power for homes. Besides, the pipelines and canals fetching Narmada water, more than 140,000 check-dams and village ponds across the state had solved the drinking-water and irrigation problems in a state that was perennially drought-prone, arid and dependent on water-tankers ferrying expensive water.

The number of registered unemployed in Gujarat had actually declined by over 15%. Almost a lakh rural-poor expecting mothers had delivered, assisted by private gynaecologists, all paid for by the state. To top it all, the past five years were riot-free, curfew-free, and despite being targeted by several terror groups from across the borders, terror-strike-free.

But, even while he was carefully building up, sammelan by sammelan, Modi was worried. Just in case the verdict goes awry; it will be huge setback for the vibrant Gujarat that was striding ahead. But why would that happen, I asked. "Only if the election gets mired into constituency-level and candidate-level non-issues," he said.

Our task was clearly cut-out. We had to keep the voters vision on the big picture; the picture comprising larger overriding issues, common to the entire Gujarat. The first task was to define this election. The rallying-cry of our campaign was to emerge from this definition.

Gujarat must foil all the propaganda tricks and traps devised to change its course, we were told. Gujarat must call the bluff of puffed-up rebels. It must see through the mischief of partisan media and not be misled. Gujarat must realize that it had to step out and vote, all by itself, and not wait for the traditional mobilization. The hope and confidence that Gujarat will prevail, led to the campaign slogan "Jeetega Gujarat".

"Jeetega Gujarat" became the battle-cry. It effortlessly replaced the traditional zindabads. But merely touting the achievements, however compelling, was not our idea of the "Jeetega Gujarat" campaign. It would have been too defensive and very self-congratulatory.

We decided to give it a sharper edge by comparing it with the wasted years under the Congress. The campaign decided to highlight UPA's poor record on national security, corruption, vote-bank politics and unfair treatment of Gujarat.

One face and name that summed the contrast with a pan-Gujarat appeal was Narendra Modi himself. Our opinion polls confirmed that Modi's approval ratings, among the cross-section of voters, were a double-digit more than that of the BJP. Hence Modi became our spearhead to keep the election hinged to the Big Picture. And before too long, Modi became that Big Picture. Our best bet was to make the voters believe that they were voting not to elect their MLA but their chief minister. TV, with a penetration of over 85% across Gujarat, had to be a key medium. We did not shoot any film.

Instead, we just edited several short, but hi-impact commercials which showed Modi and his passion in public meetings. We ran them on Gujarati channels.

In the dailies, the ads articulated the same issues with brevity and impact. Radio, curiously, had to sit out of the fray due to an earlier SC ruling. Internet played a huge role. Numerous sites offering Modi wallpapers, ringtones became massively popular. The huge Gujarati Diaspora loved it. And barely 10 days into the campaign, we received a windfall. On December 1, Sonia in her very first day of the campaign, called those who ran Gujarat "merchants of fear and death". As if that wasn't enou-gh, Digvijay Singh commented that with his statement about Hindu terrorists in Gujarat.

The next fortnight, Modi massaged every word of these gems, and their import, into his delirious audiences mind.

We did not have to worry anymore about the campaign getting stuck around MLAs. It had truly become a "Yes or No Modi" election.

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