Minimising the communication gap between the public and their political representatives

Ideally, the democratic process is about more than just elections. Although electing political representation is the foundation of a representative democracy, the liberal democratic process also contends to account for minority safeguards constitutional rule of law, checks and balances, and responsible power distribution. Political consultancy can be traced back to the 1930s in other regions of the world. Baxter and Whitaker set up Campaigns Inc. in the United States, creating the use of advertising techniques for political campaigning and developing new ways of persuasion by way of focused messaging, pamphleting, and narrativizing. They “forged a lucrative political business by discovering new ways to conduct business in politics.” Despite the fact that Madison Avenue advertising professionals engaged in a few presidential elections over the next several decades, it took until the 1980s for the phrase “political consultant” to be regarded as a full-fledged, profitable company. The political consultancy has been extensively discussed in contemporary democracies and US-affiliated nations in Europe, but it is significant that it also exists in post-colonial India. There has long been controversy about whether political parties in India organize their campaigns on the basis of ideological platforms or a power-based coalition fight. Regardless, the distance between elite leadership and common consciousness is getting wider as consultants have more influence over election campaigns and popular political ideals.
Since 2014, India’s national election campaigns have gradually been handed over to political consultants—young professionals with backgrounds in the sciences, technology, engineering, and management—who use data mining and targeted technological strategies to effectively communicate with voters. The traditional party structure’s foot soldiers, cadres, and on-the-ground workers are still doing their jobs, but more and more of them are being led by young professionals who are political strategists and who are approved by the senior party leadership. Fundamentally, political consultants help parties win elections by working with them. Professionalizing this process might mean a variety of things, but it is most often associated with the development of a more “rational” and efficient political organizational framework. This can include more effective use of demographic data to target voters, more smart use of avenues for communication, and the reorganization of political parties themselves. Importantly, the process of professionalizing political parties and elections tries to implement a “rationalization of persuasion.”
The ability to generate data sets, assemble demographic data, and strategic political campaigns in a systematic manner using logical calculation of the “odds” of winning distinguishes a professional consultant from a long-time party worker. In India’s first-past-the-post electoral system, swaying undecided voters is important. Elections are not won by aggressive campaigns that take place in the months before the vote, but rather through the four years of success of the ruling party. One of India’s most well-known political consultants, Prashant Kishor is credited with “revolutionising election campaigning in India”. He was the campaigner who helped Prime Minister Narendra Modi win the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Subsequently, he ran several successful campaigns, including one for Arvind Kejriwal of the Delhi Aam Aadmi Party in 2015, one for the farmer INC Punjab Chief Minister in 2017, and one for West Bengal Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee in 2021, among others.
“It is widely believed that those who work in a democracy are able to blend “professional” processes with representative democratic forms, such as technical efficiency and strategic planning. However, the consultants are presuming that “the participation of professionals in democracy, especially in electoral politics”.
Prior to 2012, political parties only used external advertising companies on occasion to develop large-scale campaigns emphasizing the party, rather than engaging voters to tailor messaging. Rajiv Gandhi engaged Rediffusion, an Indian advertising firm, to execute an unsuccessful campaign for the Congress party called “My Heart Beats for India” in 1989. The BJP recruited Grey Worldwide, an international advertising firm that had previously worked with Samsung and Hyundai, to launch their (also unsuccessful) “India Shining” campaign in 2004. However, the use of expert data analysts and strategists in this process is a relatively new but rapidly expanding practice with important electioneering ramifications. Due to the amplification of aspects that already existed before these instruments, these moments exhibit both rupture and continuity. First, it targets messaging on a much bigger scale while also identifying voters of interest. Second, it presents an “ideologically agnostic” and apolitical approach to backroom political strategy, which up until now has been influenced by political partisanship, grassroots allegiance, clientelism, familial ties, and/or ideological orientation. In fact, these backroom consultants’ seeming political “neutrality” is what gives them the authority to operate with a variety of opposing political parties. They are regarded as trustworthy since it is believed that they act impartially. Third, it significantly increases the level of technical professionals in the electoral process, making election campaigns an established and profitable domain.
The professionalization of commercial abilities becomes more and more appropriate to political communication as additional methods in business and commerce, such as marketing strategy, news media management, and advertising, become available. In the same way that the use of polls was dependent on advancements in sample procedures, new scientific findings might likewise result in new campaigning approaches. A growing portion of Indians are using social media, as evidenced by the Pew Research Center’s 2019 report that 64 percent of the country’s people own mobile phones and the McKinsey Global Institute’s 2019 data showing that over 40 percent have internet subscriptions and access to more data at lower prices (data costs have decreased by 95 percent since 2013). It has provided greater opportunities for strategizing. Since PM Modi’s election campaign in 2014, communication channels have changed. Social media use existed prior to that, but now individuals have their own social media cells, tiny parties have social media teams, and all candidates have their own social media teams. It is crucial to engage with them through that channel since they are aware of how to spread the word to young people, who are more accessible online. Although social media has created many new opportunities, the fundamentals remain the same. Even today, politicians strive to connect with the people, to tell them what’s in the manifesto and what they have to give. The only difference is that because of technological improvements, they can readily reach the masses and no longer need to fly to their constituency all the time to convey the same messages.
Through WhatsApp groups and Facebook messages, politicians and political parties may communicate with their supporters more directly. They have the ability to send specially crafted messages to a person’s phone, WhatsApp, or Facebook account, giving them greater private access to their brain. The Cambridge Analytica breach has highlighted the dangers of combining technology expertise, data mining, and campaign tactics. In India, Facebook and WhatsApp have come under fire for allowing political parties to use their platforms for campaigning, disseminating false material, and creating highly focused algorithms for information dissemination.
Over the past few decades, political parties have employed a variety of political consulting firms, from image management firms to boutique strategic consulting firms to larger international firms like Strategic Consulting Ltd. (which also owns Cambridge Analytica), on a smaller scale, for individual politicians and state elections. However, political consultants entered Indian national politics with the 2014 election. One of the most important political consultancy companies used by parties running in both the national and state elections is the Indian Political Action Committee (IPAC), which Prashant Kishor created.
The size of operations is expanding, notwithstanding the difficulty in gaining access to industry-wide data and the lack of regular measurement: Since it was founded in 2011, IPAC, Design Box, Political Edge, Uvaach Advisory, Mind Share and a boutique consulting firm, has worked with 100 candidates annually on average. In the two years since its establishment in 2016, WarRoom Strategies has grown from forty to seven hundred personnel.
The majority of political consultants gain market credibility by being able to tailor their campaigns to the various political parties’ messages, whether these messages are overtly “ideological” or opportunistic election promises that will most appeal to voters. If a party wins, they frequently have no say in decisions or policy formulation that could result in what they consider to be a “stable and good” government after the election. Here, the stability that is unaffected by politics is what is meant by good government. It offers another initiative to make politics professional, clean, and neutral while organizations like Top ranking firms offer this politically neutral campaigning as a kind of political engagement.
It is revealed how political consultants would conduct in-depth survey research in each constituency, place an informant in each booth for several months prior to the election, assign specific individuals to target each double-sided page of the electoral roll, gather weekly reports, and simultaneously prepare campaign jingles, posters, and slogans projecting the candidate as the solution to a variety of various and occasionally conflicting desires. They looked up demographic information on caste and socio-economic position from election registers, land records, census lists, and national surveys. Through calls, WhatsApp messaging, and WhatsApp groups that brought together members of every caste, religion, and socioeconomic class, this made it easier to target specific phone numbers. Call centre surveys, recorded calls, and measuring how long individuals listened to each message were all used to gather data.
The commercialism that is visible in local and regional elections, the capture of “vote banks” by calculated promises, and the handouts in interest-group politics are all highlighted in academic research on political persuasion in Indian elections. Even while their participation adheres to the logic of technocratic outsourcing, many of their strategies, tools, and procedures are brand-new. However, political consultants have varied strategies for focusing on voters and constituencies. For example, they generate new messages and election commitments that will appeal to voters while working closely with the political party to develop content that supports the party’s goals. They sometimes utilize their demographic data to choose which candidates should run in a certain constituency in order to increase their chances of winning. As a result, they are crucial in developing political content and determining how to best target it. While this type of deliberate political intervention could theoretically accomplish what consulting firms promise, namely to narrow the wide gap between the public and their representatives, it also implies that the planning and research that go into the campaigns lead to greater accountability or transparency.
The author is a Political Consultant and a research scholar of Journalism and Mass Communication. He can be reached at [email protected]

Aaqib Hamid