How Modi Won It: Notes from the 2014 ElectionMarked by deep ideological divisions, a massive advertising blitz and an election campaign that could claim to rival the US presidential polls, the 2014 general election has been called ‘historic’ for its verdict – a political party received a majority in the Lok Sabha for the first time in three decades. In this personal, partisan and superbly perceptive narrative of how the dice rolled in the four months leading up to 16 May 2014, Harish Khare – journalist, columnist, scholar and former media advisor to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh – provides an honest, impassioned record of India’s greatest democratic exercise. Through a meticulous account of what he saw, heard and read during this time, Khare elucidates how the different political stakeholders kneaded into their day-to-day campaign rhetoric the latent cultural angst, economic anxieties and political expectations of a nation that has changed irrevocably over the past decade, to persuade the Indian voter to cast a decisive vote. From the brilliant and flexible campaign pitch made by the BJP to the jaded and outdated Congress rhetoric, from openly expressed middle-class aspirations to rural India’s resurgent hopes, and from communal polarization to shifting caste equations, How Modi Won It provides brilliant insight into and an incisive assessment of one of the most memorable elections in the country’s history. |
