Decoding BJP’s Indefatigable ‘Election Winning Machinery’

Video Editor: Sandeep Suman

Video Producer: Hera Khan

The Karnataka elections have sparked a renewed discussion on the ‘great election machinery of the BJP’.

What is so unique about the machinery? Why is it so effective? What drives it to work tirelessly?

Let me tell you a story. During the assembly elections in West Bengal and Bihar, I visited three local offices of three political parties, chosen at random.

Why do you do what you do, I asked the workers. All three sets of workers had some interesting answers:

We’re working tirelessly. If our party wins, we expect tangible benefits to come our way.

Worker in Party Office #1

We are willing to lay down our lives. In order to fight the class enemy, we must be ready for such sacrifices.

Worker in Party Office #2

In the third office, however, the topic of discussion wasn’t limited to winning or losing an election. The focus, instead, was on building a nation with specific values.

We are working to build a Hindu rashtra.

Worker in Party Office #3

By now you must have figured out the parties I’m talking about. The first party office I visited belonged to the Janata Dal (United); the second belonged to the Communist Party of India (Marxist); while the third office was that of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Take a moment to understand the differences in the responses.

Political parties and their workers share a contractual relationship – a ‘you help me, I help you’ sort of tacit understanding. In such a scenario, there is always a risk of the party workers getting disillusioned if the parties do not fulfill the promises they make.

But the BJP has turned the traditional contractual relationship on its head. There is no contract between the leadership and the party workers. In its place is a motive, a collective vision – to build a mythical Hindu Rashtra of sorts. 

Since no time frame has been set to realise this vision, the chances of the workers becoming disappointed are very slim.

To top it all, there are scores of people associated with nearly 60,000 sakhas of the RSS working towards the common goal – complementing and supplementing the work of the BJP rank and file. It doesn’t matter whether the BJP delivers on the promises it has made; it’s about winning every election in order to move closer to fulfilling the dream.

Take a look at the magic of this new machinery. In 2014, the BJP won 282 seats in the Lok Sabha, securing 31 percent of the votes – an unprecedented vote share to seats conversion ratio that set a record in India’s electoral history.

Whether you're a part of this machinery, or whether you're watching it from a distance, you can’t deny the surprising efficiency of this machinery.

(This story was first published on Quint Hindi)

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