MODI’S KASHI YATRA – A wave, tsunami or the most well oiled -PR machinery

By Vikram SawantApril 25, 2014

On Wednesday, AAP Chief Arvind Kejriwal went to file his nomination for the only seat he is contesting from. He

put up a decent show, there was some cheering and no untoward incident. Arvind Kejriwal may have

on Wednesday gone to bed a satisfied man. Thursday morning was a different story altogether. Hours before

Narendra Modi arrived to file his nomination, the streets of the holy city were a sight to behold. A sea of saffron,

was all that was visible, wherever one turned. Somewhere in one corner of the city, Arvind Kejriwal  sat on a

dharna, protesting against alleged attacks on Somnath Bharti by BJP workers. But unfortunately for AAP, it was

the celebration extraordinaire of the BJP’s PM candidate that made headlines.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Pomp & grandeur of Narendra Modi’s roadshow was beamed across all TV channels for the country to see.

The turnout perhaps took many by surprise.  But Modi’s close aide & the man in-charge of the campaign in U.P –

Amit Shah had been working hard in the background, to ensure the BJP’s PM candidate gets the rousing

welcome that was on display. And Modi did everything right. Starting from the Banaras Hindu University, paying

respect to all the right icons & invoking the river Ganga – Narendra Modi stuck to the script & the frenzy was

evident And the icing on the cake – the four people his team chose as nominators.   The grandson of Madan

Mohan Malviya, musician Dhanulal Mishra, a weaver Ashok & a member of the boating community Veerabhadra

Nidhad.   Modi looked comfortable, almost too comfortable as he made his way through the city that is a bastion

of Hinduism.

As Varanasi came to a stand-still on the 24th, the Congress & AAP camps were clearly worried. Arvind Kejriwal,

perhaps predicting the show of strength, started damage control on Wednesday itself. During his own roadshow,

Kejriwal said “I have Rs 500 in my pocket & this jeep that I am travelling in”.   Kejriwal also predicted that Modi

would arrive by chopper & questioned the source of his funding. The Congress went a step further, demanding

an FIR be lodged against Modi & his team for drawing all the attention with their show on a day of polling. An act

that Congress says was in violation of the code of conduct, conveniently forgetting its own violation of the same

rule. Joining Congress’ chorus is BSP chief Mayawati. The former U.P Chief Minister, who many predict, may just

have the numbers to thwart Modi’s accession.

For the BJP, the criticism is perhaps perfectly timed. At a time, when questions were being raised about whether

the “Modi wave” peaked to early,yesterday’s turnout is their reply. Of course, there will be allegations of crowds

being paid, stage managed etc., but the element of spontaneity on the streets of Varanasi yesterday, can’t be

denied. Modi’s much talked of PR machinery did its job yesterday by creating the hype, publicity & curiosity

required to create the manic frenzy we saw yesterday. The last time so many people poured out on the streets,

was when Anna Hazare launched his India Against Corruption campaign. Then it was sheer anger & frustration

with the center and this time around it was the same, with the added hope of a man who is being touted as the

change India requires.

Narendra Modi called it his homecoming. Narendra Modi referred to the Ganga Jamuni tehzeeb, spoke of Muslim

weavers and quoted Kabir. Modi said he wanted to make Varanasi the spiritual capital of the world. As Modi

basked in the attention of a thousand eyes & hundreds of cameras, he gave glimpse of what may happen if he

crowned come May 16th.  And if his PR machinery keeps the momentum going, the question would not be

whether Modi will get a majority. The question will be, if Modi will get a thumping majority. Whether it will be a

wave that engulfs the country or a manufactured Tsunami that drowns the nation.

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he Modi MythologyManufacturing consent, saffron style

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B Y   Jatin Gandhi  E M A I L A U T H O R ( S )

T A G G E D U N D E R |   Narendra Modi  |   Gujarat  |   BJP  |   PR agency

S P I N

HYPE FORCE Supporters at an event organised by ‘Modifying India’—an initiative by Modi supporters to project him as Prime Minister

—in New Delhi on 31 May

On a recent visit to Chandigarh, I met a lawyer well known in Punjab for representing—often free of cost—hapless young women deserted by their NRI husbands. The discussion veered from the enormity of this problem to the next General Election and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s pitch for prime ministership. The lawyer was almost convinced of Modi’s vision and ability to lead the country because she had heard several stories in the past few years about the ‘Gujarat model of governance’.

But then, she said something spectacularly incredulous: Modi, she had heard, spends half an hour every morning on the internet solving arithmetic problems for IIT students. She said she had heard this from a senior police officer she had no reason to disbelieve. Both, it seemed from her conversation, were convinced of the BJP leader’s benign genius. While Chetan Bhagat’s achievements and ideas may have contributed to this impression of IIT students, what is amazing is how Modi’s mythology of superhuman accomplishments has penetrated the psyche of even those you’d expect would exercise a degree of scepticism when they hear something so fantastic.

Even a senior editor of The Times of India was ready to trust his sources who fed a story that was a bit too amazing. His report on Modi’s rescue of Gujaratis in Uttarakhand titled, ‘Modi’s Rambo Act, saves 15,000’ (TOI dated 23 June 2013) said, ‘Around 80 Toyota Innovas were requisitioned to ferry Gujaratis to safer places in Dehradun as were four Boeings. On Saturday, 25 luxury buses took a bunch of grateful people to Delhi. The efforts are being coordinated by two of the senior-most IAS officers of Gujarat, one currently stationed in Delhi and another in Uttarakhand.’ According to this

report by Anand Soondas, the 15,000 stranded Gujaratis were ‘rescued’ in two days. This, at a time when the Indian Army was struggling to get just a few hundred people to safety every day.

Almost every day, the Indian media—and sometimes the foreign media too—is tricked or influenced by Modi’s Public Relations machinery.

And ‘machinery’ is the right word for it. It is large and consists of multiple levers, chains and cogs at several levels of operation. Its command panel rests with the CM’s office in Gandhinagar, and it has been working without a break to conjure a larger-than-life public persona for the Gujarat Chief Minister.

Before the Bharatiya Janata Party decided to throw its weight and might behind Modi’s pitch for prime ministership, this machinery was external to the party. For half a decade now, the Gujarat government has had PR and advocacy agencies, both national and international, working on contracts issued by it. Manufacturing consent across social media platforms, Modi also has teams in Bangalore and Mumbai. The BJP’s infotech cell, no less well equipped, has now geared itself to augment that apparatus. Apart from that, there are ground forces in the form of dedicated party cadres or Modi fan outfits (the likes of ‘Modifying India’ and ‘Modi for PM’ as they are called).

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The Guajarat Government is in the process of finalising a new contract with a PR agency. The current contract, held by Delhi-based Mutual PR, expires in a couple of months. The government’s international contract, held worldwide by Apco, an American lobbying firm, ended in March 2013; it was estimated to be worth Rs 13 lakh a month.

A look at the ‘Request for Proposal’ document, which is confidential (available only to bidding agencies), reveals the mammoth task that managing the Gujarat CM’s public image is. The document issued by the state government says it expects the agency to hard sell ‘positive growth and developments happening in the state at regular intervals, or as and when asked to do so by the Commissionerate of Information’. The stated objectives of the exercise are: ‘to help shape favorable media opinion for Gujarat Government, both nationally as well as internationally…and… to position Gujarat as one of India’s leading states across sectors by increasing visibility and enhancing ‘top of the mind’ recall so as to make it an ideal destination among various stakeholders.’ The PR firm that wins the bid is expected to report to the state’s Commissionerate of Information and prepare ‘an effective Public Relations Strategy Plan for the Government of Gujarat with a vision for the next year’ while making ‘all arrangements necessary for the media coverage of any event when dignitaries from Gujarat, such as the Governor of Gujarat, Chief Minister or any other important dignitaries, on their visits to Delhi or any other part of the country or as and when asked to do so by the Commissionerate of Information’.

The Request document states that the hired PR firm should ‘arrange for national and international media to visit Gujarat and attend various events organized by the different departments of the Government of Gujarat’. Further, that ‘The number of media personnel for any event shall be decided by the Commissionerate after deliberation on the scale of the event. It is the Firm’s responsibility to arrange for the visits of journalists to Gujarat, any other part of the country or abroad. The expenses for the same will be reimbursed by the Commissionerate of Information on the submission of actual bills.’

Sources in Gujarat reveal that the state government has already borne the expenses of scores of journalists, paying for their flights, travel within Gujarat and stay on assorted occasions (and multiple visits in some cases). Senior journalists are usually assured of luncheon meetings with Modi, with seating plans drawn up to boost their egos. The current Indian PR agency has so far arranged meetings between Modi and a range of newspaper and magazine editors. Starting this year, the government also has a budget allocation for taking journalists abroad on Modi’s foreign visits.

Apart from acting as facilitators, the agency’s executives are expected to prepare press releases and articles, supply information to journalists for publication and telecast. This is par for the PR course, anyone would say, but while routine PR work does involve stiff targets, here is a list of what Gujarat expects, according to its Request document:

‘The firm should also strive to achieve the targets stated below:

» Publication of at least 6 major stories from the State in a quarter based on the input provided by the State Government in national News Papers viz. HT, TOI, Indian Express, Hindu, ET, etc.» Publication of 6 major stories in regional newspapers in a quarter again based on the input provided by the State Government» Publication of 6 major stories in a quarter in the major vernacular Newspapers with widespread coverage viz. Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Bengali, Kannada, Oriya, Urdu, etc.» Publication of at least one major story in national magazines viz. India Today, Frontline, Outlook, The Week, etc. based on the input provided by the State Government» Coverage/ telecast of at least one major story every month in a major TV News Channel viz. NDTV, Times Now, CNN-IBN, AajTak, Zee News, Star News, TV Today, etc.’+++

PR industry insiders say that while Indian clients usually insist on assured numbers, PR firms rarely promise these in contracts. For the Gujarat government, however, most agencies are willing to make an exception. Mutual PR is said to have met its earlier targets successfully—a reflection on media gullibility if not complicity—and remains frontrunner among those vying for the latest contract.

Apart from achieving those targets, the PR agency is expected to follow the following practice: ‘Arrange for press conferences, one-to-one meets, roadshows or any other such BTL activities in consultation with the Commissionerate, or as and when instructed by the Commissionerate to do so.’

The devil is concealed in the details of objectives such as this: ‘Crisis perception management and informing the Commissionerate of Information about impending stories about Gujarat State / leadership.’ In effect, an industry insider reveals, this is where the dirty work comes in. The ‘leadership’ clearly refers to Modi. From slowly working on journalists and feeding them stories, and, in some cases, doling out advertisements to their employers, the state government does it all. ‘Crisis perception management’ essentially kicks in at times when Modi goofs up an interview with remarks like the recent one he made to Reuters about a puppy under his car’s wheel. Or when he told The Wall Street Journal in June 2012 that malnutrition among children

under five was explained by middle-class girls in Gujarat being “more figure conscious than health conscious”.

The Request document clearly demands that the agency’s officials ‘monitor the presence of, and discussions about, brand Gujarat in social and political circles…This can be achieved through, among other activities, continuously monitoring and tracking all national and regional newspapers, magazines, TV channels, the inter-web, blogs and other channels of external communication at regular intervals.’

The government expects PR executives to ‘have close liaisons with correspondents, reporters, editors, photographers, think-tanks, critics, trend-setters and other such opinion leaders’.

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Among the handful of agencies vying for the contract are Mutual PR and another Delhi based agency Avian Media. Executives at both agencies confirm they are bidding for it. “We are really too small to manage Mr Modi’s image,” says Kavita Datta, partner at Mutual PR, “We work for the government on creating awareness on development and social sector initiatives.” The targets set by the state government, Datta says, are not unusual: “When you are on a monthly retainership, you have to bring it down to deliverables.” Nitin Mantri, CEO of Avian Media, confirms that his firm is in the race for the account, which is expected to fetch around Rs 5 lakh per month. Of course, the contract comes with a Non Disclosure Agreement.

“The original contract [won by Mutual PR four years ago],” says another source in Delhi, “was a pink paper contract meant for hard selling Gujarat in the business papers, but sometime last year, the Commissionerate started asking the agency to focus more on political reporters and mainstream papers than on business papers. This was also the time when the focus of these stories became more [Modi] personality centric.”

At the Vibrant Gujarat summit earlier this year, a list of 20 journalists was drawn for a luncheon meeting with Modi. On this list was Madhu Kishwar, editor of Manushi and a fellow at the Delhi-based Centre for Study of Developing Societies, who has turned from being a critic to an advocate of Modi. Internal communication accessed by Open shows that the agency was wooing Kishwar, something she firmly denies. She says that she is writing a book on Modi: “I am going to include a chapter, I think, on the myth and reality of Modi’s PR. There is no PR. I have written angry letters to the CM’s office asking for information for which I have been waiting several weeks now. They are so overburdened.”With Kishwar claiming she is oblivious to the machinery at work, the Gujarat government nevertheless gave her special attention because she was seen as one of the lone voices emerging from the ‘the Left liberal space’ favourable to Modi’s policies with ‘captive column space available to her in The Hindu, DNA and Manushi…’+++

Modi’s team in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar is led by his trusted aide K Kailashnathan, a 1979 batch Gujarat cadre IAS officer who was appointed chief principal secretary to the CM a day after he retired on 31 May. Earlier, before he was appointed additional chief secretary (a post he held till retirement) to Modi, he had been Commissioner of Industries and CEO of the Gujarat Maritime Board. He was the official in charge at the time that Gujarat privatised its ports.

In May, the charge of information and broadcasting was given to GC Murmu, a 1985 batch officer who had handled sensitive legal cases—including those related to encounter deaths—and forms a part of his core team. As home secretary of the state in 2004, Murmu was accused of ‘tutoring and coercing witnesses’ who appeared before the Nanavati-Shah Commission that probed the 2002 riots.

In Ahmedabad, the CMO coordinates PR efforts with the social media team in Bangalore put together by Rajesh Jain and BG Mahesh, who have gathered a bunch of over 100 techies in that city. Both Modi and the BJP, reveals a party source, see social media as a game changer for the polls of 2014. Both Mahesh and Jain, contacted by Open, decline comment. “I don’t speak about it to the media at all,” says Jain, who is based in Mumbai.

“I can’t comment on any of it,” says Mahesh, “Someone from Mr Modi’s office will contact you.”

Jain is also the founder of NitiDigital, a company that owns the websiteNiti Central, known for its Modi tomtoms. In June last year, on his own blog he put up a post titled, ‘BJP’s project 275 for 2014’. In this, he argued that the BJP would need a wave election and should focus on 350 winnable seats. ‘The last wave election was in 1984,’ Jain wrote. He seems to have more confidence in the BJP’s vote-catching abilities than the party itself.As Open goes to press, Modi’s Facebook page has over 2.3 million ‘likes’ while his Twitter followers exceed 1.9 million—no Indian politician has a higher count.

A proportion of those are fake followers, who include bots. There exist sites that sift real followers from fakes, but there is no uniformity in their statistics. What is beyond dispute though is that among Modi’s social media fans, there are millions of fakes.

The response of the BJP to this fact is predictable. “These figures are all rubbish,” says Arvind Gupta, head of the party’s infotech cell. Modi’s close aide Amit Shah has been appointed in-charge of the party’s social media campaign, which means Gupta is effectively going to take orders from Modi on the campaign. He adds that different algorithms throw up different results. But he does concede “you can’t know how many of these followers are voters”.

The BJP’s social media strategy, which now converges on Modi’s own after his appointment as its Campaign Committee chief, appears to rely on the fact that between the 2009 and 2014 elections, India has added close to 100 million new voters. In the previous General Election, the estimate of first-time voters stood at 60 million.

Among the most vulnerable to the elaborate PR machinery are members of the BJP itself. Their fascination with Modi has been evident ever since his elevation within the party. Spokespersons and leaders now defend Modi with the same aggression and ferocity that the Congress reserves for its first family.

Meenakshi Lekhi, spokesperson of the BJP, says that Congress attacks on Modi have increased after his elevation in the party, but the BJP has a plan to counter the Congress. This counter plan will surely focus on Modi.

Dissent within the BJP is at a new low as well. Thespian Amir Raza Hussain is the latest victim of the party’s new game; he was forced to resign as vice-president of the BJP’s Delhi unit after he praised LK Advani over Modi in a TV discussion.

Such a personality cult is not new to the BJP, but never before has the party fallen in line so meekly behind one man.

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Modi’s messaging machine: How NaMo wins the PR war by Lakshmi Chaudhry Apr 11, 2013 #Feku on Twitter #Narendra Modi #Public Relations agency #social media #WideAngle inShare 1 166 CommentsEmailPrint Earlier this week, BJP and Congress spokespersons each accused the other side of "faking it" in the recent #Feku vs #ModiStormsFICCI Twitter war: Your guys are all paid flunkeys, while our supporters are genuine, passionate citizens who truly believe in the cause.  The absurd premise of this mutual accusation game was that a 'paid' or 'unpaid' social media campaign is somehow shameful or 'wrong.' Primetime politics is a public relations war fought on multiple fronts, from the dais in a dusty village to the air-conditioned TV studio to the viral battlefields of social media. This is an objective fact not a moral judgement. It's just how the political game is played these days. It is what it is, as George Bush once famously said. And the #Feku hashtag revealed a lumbering Congress belatedly jumping in to the online fray to take on its hitherto uncontested champion, Narendra Modi. Modi is a master of public relations, and its greatest innovator in Indian politics. This makes him a modern 21st century politician, not necessarily a sinister one. Yet Rana Ayyub's Tehelka profile f Modi's PR apparatus repeatedly takes on an ominous undertone as she describes "an almost obsessive campaign that Modi has used, unprecedented in the history of independent India." Modi is a master of public relations, and its greatest innovator in Indian politics.. PTI The 5-page cover story offers an up-close look at the operations of Modi's messaging

machine. One example is his speech to the India Today conclave: The speech was covered by most journalists on the social media. Criticism of Modi was dealt with by an army of Twitter handles, most with anonymous identities. Then there were journalists, unabashedly pro-Modi, and their websites and handles, which culled out the significant parts of his speech and tweeted them. From Kanchan Gupta, who runs news website Niti Central, to Tarun Vijay, who tweeted about the desire of a certain editor of a ‘secular’ magazine to pose with Modi. The tweet received more than a 1,000 retweets, mostly from anonymous handles otherwise busy hurling abuses at all those who attempted to correct Modi’s exaggerated GDP figures. The cameras too did their job, by zooming in on people in the audience who mattered the most. The image of beaming feminist and activist Madhu Kishwar, the new poster woman of the Modi fan club, was played time and again by the channels. What we witness over and again is the workings of a NaMo echo chamber made up of different elements that span the information landscape, including the twitterati, journalists, bloggers, official and unofficial pro-Modi groups, and the party apparatus. Each may exist independently of Modi, but this is the first candidate to actively tap into, coordinate and amplify their efforts. The result is a multiplier effect. Everywhere we look, we see a larger-than-life Modi backed by  vast armies of supporters, creating the desired sense of political dominance and inevitability: From his Sadbhavna fast two years ago, when an RTI application revealed the state government had spent money on providing free skullcaps, to news being viralled on the Internet about former Congress member Asifa Khan joining the BJP, to Irfan Pathan campaigning for him or inviting Modi for his brother Yusuf’s wedding, there is no news his PR agency does not publicise. If at all in trouble, whether it is over the CAG indictment for undue favours, or the diluting of the Lokayukta, the Modi fanboys on social media come to the rescue by using Hindutva to counter the charges. From the likes of Subramanian Swamy, who Modi counts as one of his strongest admirers, to a section of supporters in the media and a battery of intellectuals, there is nothing that Modi runs short of. Welcome to political warfare in the Age of Information. Modi's campaign is "unprecedented" because he is first Indian politician to spearhead a thoroughly modern political campaign, the kind that is now routine in the United States. for decades, the Republicans dominated the electoral landscape because of a tightly disciplined messaging machine which encompassed TV news channels and papers, radio talk shows, online bloggers, wealthy financiers, a battery of think-tanks, local grassroots organisations like churches and clubs to dominate the national discourse. The liberals bitterly complained about media manipulation, manufactured consent, and Republican lies, all to no avail. Barack Obama is the first Democrat who stopped complaining and started doing. He won by creating his very own PR machine, equally nimble, wily and aggressive, and a powerful grassroots organisation that pulled together liberal networks and constituencies, even as he created new ones.  This is how the electoral game is played today in the United States. Its strategies were first employed by Modi's NRI supporters, who helped convert their candidate, who has since embraced the imported model with gusto and to great success. The #Feku campaign was the belated acknowledgement of a new media reality thrust upon a lumbering Congress by the rise of Narendra Modi. The BJP party and Modi's rivals within it too are playing catch-up. It is Modi not the party that is driving this new style of campaigning. The real downside to this new brand of politicking — as Americans have found out — is that it transforms facts into ideological opinion. Everything is up for debate, including reality itself. Soon the public is divided into two polarised camps who can't even agree on what is true — which makes policy debates moot. Political arguments over solutions are only possible when the both sides agree on the facts, be it statistics on poverty, land use, malnutrition, development indicators, sexual violence etc. Political contests then become about image not substance. It's all about who can better market his version of the truth. And no one is well-served by politics reduced to perception. Not democracy or its citizens. While Modi may be changing the way we fight elections, but come 2014, the parties will still have to win the gaddi the old-fashioned way: wooing allies, making caste and sectarian calculations, trading political favours, hustling for seats, one dusty constituency at a time. In other words, wrestling with unwieldy, diverse, chaotic reality of India. We're still far, far away from being a nation whose elections are decided by who wins on Twitter or the primetime news. And that may not be such a bad thing.

Read more at: http://www.firstpost.com/politics/modis-messaging-machine-how-namo-wins-the-pr-war-694799.html?utm_source=ref_article

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Modi’s Operandi

Twitter, blogs, news portals, investor summits, celebrities – nothing seems to have escaped the public relations blitzkrieg driving Narendra Modi’s prime ministerial ambitions

RANA AYYUB  | @RanaAyyub

2013-04-13 , Issue 14 Volume 10

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Man Friday: Widely regarded as Modi’s hatchet man, Amit Shah will play a big role in the run-up to the polls

@Albatrossinfo what is #ModiNama? It is 1 man’s fight v/s intellectuals+media+Congress+NGOs+DilliSultanate+VHP(at times)+(compromised)SC+ItalianMafia

@Amitvkaushik NaMo does not have hold on the discision takes for other States and hence the BJP leaders in Delhi, UP etc stink

The language and style of the tweets  must be familiar to many of us conversant with social media and subjected to tweets by Narendra Modi’s fan club. But these are not just ordinary Twitter handles. These are some of the many that Modi follows and hence endorses on Twitter. Perhaps then there is not much scope for further assessment of Modi’s prime ministerial ambitions, which has been spoken of in newspaper editorials churned every day.

With his induction into the BJP Parliamentary Board earlier this week, Modi supporters would want us to believe the stage is set for his coronation. While party presidentRajnath Singh stated the move had nothing to do with Modi’s clout in the party,Modi’s PR machine has managed to swell public opinion in his favour over the past four years. Modi’s induction is perhaps the result of well-crafted pressure built by various groups in India and abroad that have been working overtime to construct a larger-than-life image of him.

Twitter Chatter

#NaMo sprang to life on the popular microblogging site. Here’s a sample of how Modiadmirers drive his prime ministerial ambitions

@ashokepanditThank U India Today Conclave for confirming our belief in NarendraModi as our future PM

@madhukishwarThose going berserk over 4 Modinamas better save your abuses- Many more Modi namas to follow before I take on gujarat development story

@madhukishwarMohan Bhagwat joined Togadia to rake up Ram Mandir issue to create trouble for Modi and giveCongress big handle. Kitna bhunaoge Ram ko ?

@riya043@narendramodi’s single speech is more inspiring than PM MaunMohan singh’s entire life

There were three other chief ministers in the running for induction into the Parliamentary Board. It was Modi who was chosen over the likes of Shivraj Singh Chauhan, whose candidature was endorsed by LK Advani. While Rajnath insisted seniority was the criteria, the appointment of Modi’s hatchet man Amit Shah as the party general secretary speaks volumes. While insiders believe the elevation of Shah, who has been charged by the CBI with murder in two fake encounters, will send a wrong signal, and by bowing down to Modi’s diktat the BJP has set a wrong precedent, there is a section within the party that calls it an attempt to checkmate Modi in his own game.

When asked to comment, a senior RSS leader suggested it had become an absolute necessity to involve Modi in BJP affairs at a national level to send out a strong signal to the voters, mostly the young ones who find themselves enthralled by the image Modi has built for himself. “Nobody is in a hurry to name the prime ministerial candidate of the BJP or the NDA just yet,” he says. “For the BJP to be in a position to name its PM candidate, it needs the requisite numbers, and those numbers seem to be distant. For now, we need to galvanise the numbers in our favour. If the Modi mania can produce the numbers, and for that if we need to have Modi in the Parliamentary Board, then it’s a small price to pay.”

Another BJP leader known for his anti- Modistance believes Modi’s induction is an attempt to checkmate him at a time when he had been bargaining for his own say in party affairs. Shah, who has been asked by the Supreme Court to stay out of Gujarat, found himself in a constant tussle with Modi’s other favourite Anandiben Patel, who seems to have made the most of Shah’s absence in the state. With Shah’s closest team of policemen languishing in jails following cases of fake encounters and his confidant GL Singhal being arrested in the Ishrat Jehan case last month, Shah had been building pressure on Modi to bring him back into the BJP mainstream.

While Rajnath found himself uncomfortable answering questions on Shah, managing to fumble that the case was sub-judice, it was not difficult to sense the pressure theBJP had been under.

When contacted, RSS leader Ram Madhav suggested Rajnath had done a balancing act, while repeating the standard reply of the RSS: “We did not put pressure on them or suggest to them to appoint people. It was purely in the hands of senior BJP leaders under the leadership of Rajnathji to come to a decision.”

With the inclusion of Varun Gandhi and Uma Bharti as office-bearers, Rajnath has indeed done a balancing act, one that explains Modi’s insistence on getting Shah in the team. Both Varun and Uma come with a hardline Hindutva image and have the ability to consolidate votes in north India. Former Karnataka chief minister Sadananda Gowda, who had to make way for Modi favourite Jagdish Shettar, also finds himself back in the new team.

In a situation like this when the party seems to have been looking for ways to counter the Modi mania, it is pertinent to assess events of the past three years that culminated in Modi’s induction. Whether Modi will become the prime minister or not will indeed depend on the party’s performance in the Lok Sabha election; that the BJP will have to pander to its allies like the JD(U) and Shiv Sena, which have expressed their displeasure at Modi’s candidature, is something that will indeed weigh in. But for a man who has been in the news in the past three years courtesy his ambitions, it would be interesting to delve into an almost obsessive campaign that Modi has used, unprecedented in the history of independent India.

THREE WEEKS ago, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was in New Delhi to address a public rally demanding special status for Bihar. Before that Modi was also in the capital to attend the annual conclave of a news magazine; in attendance were industrialists, journalists and activists. Before Modi began his address, there was a ‘visual treat’ in store for those waiting with bated breath for him to speak (if one were to believe BJP leader Tarun Vijay, who was live tweeting from the event). The corporate film that showcased Gujarat’s achievements under Modi had the audience in rapt attention. Strategically placed across the hall were foreigners (who we were told were businessmen in awe of Modi). After the film (it is believed that Akriti APCO, the subsidiary of PR agency APCO Worldwide, made the film) a beaming Modi held forth with a two-hour speech. While the speech was more or less a repetition of the film script, the biggest indicator of Modi’s obsessive love of himself was the use of ‘me’ (My Gujarat, My efforts, My foresight).

The speech was covered by most journalists on the social media. Criticism of Modi was dealt with by an army of Twitter handles, most with anonymous identities. Then there were journalists, unabashedly pro-Modi, and their websites and handles, which culled out the significant parts of his speech and tweeted them. From Kanchan Gupta, who runs news website Niti Central, to Tarun Vijay, who tweeted about the desire of a certain editor of a ‘secular’ magazine to pose with Modi. The tweet received more than a 1,000 retweets, mostly from anonymous handles otherwise busy hurling abuses at all those who attempted to correct Modi’s exaggerated GDP figures. The cameras too did their job, by zooming in on people in the audience who mattered the most. The image of beaming feminist and activist Madhu Kishwar, the new poster woman of the Modifan club, was played time and again by the channels.

Kishwar’s turnaround and change of heart vis-a-vis the Modi administration came about earlier this year when she was found gushing about Modi’s biannual Vibrant Gujarat summit, which she attended for the first time. Since then, her publication, Manushi, has taken upon itself the task of clearing Modi’s name in the 2002 communal riots. In one of her tweets, Kishwar wrote, “Why doesn’t anyone applaudModi for preventing any communal riots between 2002 and 2012?”

Kishwar added she was a victim like many others of a barrage of misinformation spread by activists and politicians, including some of her friends. As if to compensate, she published a four-part piece on her website lauding Modi’s work and how his government deserved laurels.

From here began the work of Modi’s PR machine. From Center Right India, which did interviews with Kishwar, to Friends of BJP, which viralled her columns across the Gujarati community in the US, UK and India. Back home, Modi’s website (narendramodi.in), which streams live videos of his speeches and is flooded with images of him with foreign dignitaries, used Kishwar’s remarks as a badge of honour.

Zahir Jan Mohammed, a resident of Juhapura in Ahmedabad who has worked in the US House of Representatives as a senior foreign policy aide and was a witness to the 2002 riots, is documenting the events since that fateful year. Perplexed by Kishwar’s assertions, Zahir wrote an open letter to her on an independent website. “Her columns were all ridden with misinformation, and I had to counter it,” says Zahir. But apparently, PR power is much stronger than facts. Perhaps a classic example of which could be Vibrant Gujarat, a brainchild of ad firm Gray Worldwide. Modi’s PR blitzkrieg begins here.

From his Sadbhavna fast two years ago, when an RTI application revealed the state government had spent money on providing free skullcaps, to news being viralled on the Internet about former Congress member Asifa Khan joining the BJP, to Irfan Pathan campaigning for him or inviting Modi for his brother Yusuf’s wedding, there is no news his PR agency does not publicise. If at all in trouble, whether it is over the CAG indictment for undue favours, or the diluting of the Lokayukta, the Modi fanboys on social media come to the rescue by using Hindutva to counter the charges. From the likes of Subramanian Swamy, who Modi counts as one of his strongest admirers, to a section of supporters in the media and a battery of intellectuals, there is nothing thatModi runs short of.

Perhaps the most interesting anecdote of Modi’s PR machinery comes from a journalist- cum-filmmaker working for an international publication. She wanted to do a piece on Gujarat and was given two dozen books on Vibrant Gujarat and Swarnim Gujarat. She was also given a CD with a video of Suhel Seth praising Modi. When she met the CM and his bureaucrats, she was taken around the office and handed over 12 books written by Modi (including those of his poems and compilation of his blog) “He’s very impressed with Obama,” said an official, “you should draw more comparisons between the two.”

In 2009, Gujarat Congress leader Shaktisinh Gohil raised a seemingly trivial issue on the floor of the Assembly, which might be of relevance in the context of Modi’s popularity. Gohil asserted that Sanskardham, a school that was Modi’s brainchild, was being used to further his publicity despite the fact that he had given up charge of the school. Having managed to get some information via RTI on Sanskardham, Gohil went on to tell the media that former students and workers at Sanskardham had spoken to him and had disclosed shocking details on condition of anonymity.

“We had found that students, mostly those whose families had RSS backgrounds, were taken on board,” said Gohil. “They work in three shifts and each of them had as many as 1,000 email ids. Their job is to post comments on every website where a Modi article appears, and also blog about him. One of the students I spoke to was given the job of writing testimonials on Modi’s website. He posed as a businessman or a doctor and praised the efficiency of the Modi government. I verified this information with some bureaucrats and they conceded. This is the real truth of Vibrant Gujarat.” When TEHELKA tried to gather information about Sanskardham, we were stonewalled by the officials.

One cannot agree or disagree with this, but what one sees of late does lend credence to Gohil’s accusation. For instance, all one needs to do is check the list of people Modifollows on Twitter. The list varies from NaMo4PM to handles that abuse anyone questioning Modi’s ambitions. And this is no hypothesis, as it is Modi’s official handle, and his endorsement says a lot.

If Gohil is to be believed, the anonymous handles on Twitter, and the accounts that post comments on YouTube, Facebook and Google Plus, are products of organisations like Sanskardham. Another factor that binds Modi followers on Twitter, besides the fact that most of them are expatriates, right-leaning, self-confessed nationalists, sanatan dharmis, engineers, doctors from acclaimed US and UK-based universities, is their allegiance to organisations like Centre Right India and Friends of BJP. A state official, who TEHELKA spoke to, conceded the state’s IT cell dedicates most of its resources to handling these social networking groups.

ONE OF the major sources of embarrassment for Modi over the past few years has been the reluctance of the US and UK governments to grant him a visa for his role in the 2002 riots. No wonder then that UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s visit to India was monitored closely and intense lobbying was done by pro-Modi groups.

Among the lobbyists was Manoj Ladwa. Hailing from Porbander in Gujarat, Ladwa is the convener of the Europe India Chamber of Commerce and is at the core of lobbying for Modi. Having worked in Mumbai and New York, he returned to London and in 2002 founded MLS Chase, headquartered opposite the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. He merged his legal practice with Sharrards Solicitors LLP in February 2012.

It was Ladwa who was instrumental in citing Gujarat as a great destination of investment for the UK, especially as Cameron faced elections and a good part of the population that could vote the Tories back to power was the strong Indian community. If Modi’s aides are to be believed, Cameron has conveyed to Manmohan Singh that if at all Modi is to be granted a UK visa, it will be for the interests of his government coming back to power and that the Gujarati community needs to be kept in good humour. Whether this is the handiwork of lobbying by Ladwa or a PR machinery could be anyone’s guess.

For his part, Ladwa has said in an interview that “Britain has been watching as Modihas visited China, Russia, Japan and Singapore, and was under tremendous pressure to come up with some face-saving measure to end its self-imposed exile in Gujarat. There are 6 lakh Gujaratis in UK.”

The Modi Factory

The bloggers, students and NRI businessmen who make Modi’s slick PR machine tick

DESH GUJARAT A web portal that widely covers Narendra Modi’s public relations activities

SANSKARDHAM Located in Ahmedabad, the school was an initiative of Modibefore he became chief minister. It is now the hub of Modi’s PR activities. Members have Twitter accounts to post opinion in Modi’s favour

NATIONAL INDIAN AMERICAN PUBLIC POLICY INSTITUTE The Chicago-based outfit fixed the recent trip of three US Congress members to Gujarat

OVERSEAS FRIENDS OF BJP Convener Vijay Jolly was instrumental in garnering the Wharton business school invite for Modi, which was cancelled later

NAMO GUJARAT A local news channel in Gujarat that focusses on Modi

GRAY WORLDWIDE The advertising firm that first came up with the Vibrant Gujarat concept

APCO WORLDWIDE Replaced Gray Worldwide in 2009. Was responsible for the Canadian prime minister’s decision to invest in Gujarat

EUROPE INDIA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE Its convener Manoj Ladwa was responsible for lobbying for Modi before the British Prime Minister David Cameron’s visit

INDIAN AMERICANS FOR FREEDOM The goal of the website is “individual liberty, free enterprise and freedom from bureaucrats”. It gets its support from US Congressman Joe Walsh who wrote a letter to Hilary Clinton to grant Modi a visa

HINDU AMERICAN FOUNDATION A pro-Modi organisation funded and run by Gujaratis in the US

A week before Cameron visited India with his delegation, the UK-India Business Council (UKIBC) had called in APCO to help the prime minister with communications support. APCO Worldwide, which is believed to have made the turnaround for Modi, is an independent communications consultancy. With more than 600 employees in 29 worldwide locations, it is the second largest independently-owned PR firm in the US. Headquartered in Washington, DC, APCO was founded in 1984. The UKIBC already works with APCO in India and this along with lobbying by pro-Modi business groups was responsible for the softening of stands on the chief minister.

Modi’s spin doctors came to his rescue yet again last month when a three-member delegation led by US Congress members Aaron Schock, Cynthia Lummis and Cathy Rodgers came to visit him. A fortnight before the members reached Gujarat, local and national media houses were sent notes by bureaucrats that Modi had crossed a major hurdle. A local newspaper editor from Gujarat was asked to dedicate his paper’s front page to the news that “Modi had finally conquered US”. Modi’s website, had minute-by-minute details of the delegation’s visit, including flashy photographs of Modi with the three members.

Before the lawmakers arrived, Modi’s PR department issued two advertisements. His government was issuing three types of packages to corporates: 7 star, 5 star and 3 star. The ad read, “Invitation to join the business delegation led by Congressmen Schock, Stuzman, Loomis and Gardner. Departing 26 March — return on 7 April. Package includes private dinner meeting with top leadership of India including chief ministersModi, Badal and Shettar.”

Modi’s PR machine organised a starry press conference and reporters were encouraged to ask questions from the three members on Modi’s ascent to the top position. And they happily obliged. Schock, interestingly, is facing a House Ethics investigation for misuse of funds and violating federal laws. It would be important to recollect that it was Schock who praised Modi on the floor of the House when the latter won a third successive term in December 2012.

What came as an embarrassment for Modi were newspaper reports which alleged that his government had paid money to the three US Congress members to make the trip. Even if one were to dismiss that it was a paid trip, one can only ask the Modigovernment as to how three junior members on a private visit amounted to Modigetting an American visa?

Congress leader Rashid Alvi said that it was the biggest sham the country had ever witnessed. As Zahir Jan Mohammed points out, “This is laughable. When any member of the US Congress travels abroad, he/she travels as an official of the US and carries a US diplomatic passport. But that person does not necessarily hold the views of the US or the White House.”

The visit of the US Congress members was organised by the Chicago-based National Indian American Public Policy Institute. Of late, the group, which has a considerable number of the Patel community, has been playing a significant role in helping Modigain acceptance.

It was this group, along with the Overseas Friends of the BJP and its convener Vijay Jolly, that had organised the Wharton speech by Modi, later cancelled. The group has been specifically asked by the Modi regime to arrange two trips by the end of August to reputed American institutes.

@sarkar_swatiPerhaps Bhupendra Chaubey shud

have asked his boss & former colleague of why they took it to themselves to villifyModi as a mass murderer?@KanchanGuptaWhen you see @narendramodi spontaneously indulging in light-hearted banter you realise why he is different and connects with people easily@emaninMSM is driving a ‘Hardline Hindutva’ agenda as their ‘anti-NaMo’ campaigns have failed to give the desired results@shilpitewariWhile all the articles analysed all muslim colonies in guj why didnt they see the muslims leaning to vote for modi? Abt 31% did

What is this hype leading to? There has been a concerted move to show Modi is building bridges with Muslims, thanks to efforts by the likes of Zafar Sareshwala, a Muslim industrialist from Gujarat whose fortune has grown manifold in the past 12 years. Sareshwala has been one of the most significant spin doctors for Modi who has also used his Bollywood links to help Modi. FromModi’s meetings with scriptwriter Salim Khan to his Google Hangouts with actor Ajay Devgn, who is whispered to have sought land in Gujarat for his film institute, Modi has not left any stone unturned.

An editor of a Gujarati daily adds, “Look at portals like deshgujarat.com, they are covertly run by the state government. Every time a celebrity, for instance Ajay Devgn, visits the state, the website declares in bold: Devgn calls Gujarat the best-ruled state, plans to invest in solar power”.

Modi’s officials also speak of his intention to celebrate Gujarat Foundation Day in London and APCO’s endeavour to organise a public function for Modi in Brussels.

If there is one thing that has come in handy for Modi, it is natural resources, which Gujarat provides to industrial houses like the Ambanis, the Tatas, the ESSAR group and the Adanis. Check the website of APCOWorldwide to Aakruti APCO, the Indian subsidiary of APCO, and its client list tells you the story. Adani, GPSC, Modigovernment, Vibrant Gujarat dominate its screen. Call up APCO and Aakriti and ask them about the money the regime pays for its services and you are stonewalled.

Will all this reap dividends for Modi? One of Modi’s propaganda machines might well have the answer. The introduction on his Facebook page reads, “If awards, honours and grants are to be taken as accolades, the verdict is clear. The recognition is not just statewide, it’s national and international. And, it’s the same Modi-Magic that has worked here.”

 

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(Published in Tehelka Magazine, Volume 10 Issue 14, Dated 13 April 2013)

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Truth vs Hype

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Narendra Modi: The Grand Illusion? Sreenivasan Jain Ahmedabad: There may be general consensus that the election in Gujarat is a no contest but the jury is still out on whether to credit Narendra Modi’s performance as Chief Minister, or credit his massive and expensive propaganda machine, which his critics say has vastly inflated his rather limited successes. The Modi PR machine never sleeps, but in election time, goes into overdrive. 

There are his surreal, and much publicised 3 D speeches, 29 Vikas Raths equipped with projectors, and 10 LED Raths each with a 110” screen which roam interior villages. His personal website has been given a spanking new election upgrade. As has his other social media platforms: Twitter, Facebook page and Youtube channel. The frequency of advertisements on TV, print and online have multiplied. And he also has his own TV channel: NaMo Gujarat, which was launched just before the elections. But who runs this for Modi, and who pays for it? As with most things related to Modi, answers are not easy to come by. The Modi spin machine appears to use a mix of official, quasi-official and private players, with fragmented responsibilities, a structure that allows for grey areas of accounting and accountability.   One such hub is run in a corporate tower in Ahmedabad at the offices of Maulik Bhagat, who runs a software and media firm. Bhagat is only 27 years old, but his father is BJP party Headquarter fixture, and Modi confidante Parindu Bhagat. He’s a new, but integral part of the Modi spin team, creating the concept for a series of popular ‘kabbadi’ ads, meant to highlight the leaderless state of the Gujarat Congress. Maulik says he is also coordinating the Chief Minister’s mammoth online and social media campaign.  

But at the BJP headquarters Rajeeka Kacheeria, who head the party’s IT cell, seems to suggest that she is coordinating a similar effort. The confusion over who runs his online operations, extends to questions about costs as well. Maulik says that while social media is low cost, but admits that running websites and producing ads and buying ad space comes at a cost. He says he doesn't have any idea of budgets.   There is equal secrecy about the other big expense: the 3D projections.  

The opposition claims they were quoted figures of Rs. 5-6 crore per projection. If that was true , by the end of the election Mr Modi would have spent Rs 20 crores on the 3D visuals alone.

But Mr Mani Shankar, the director of the projections says that his lips are sealed, and he cannot talk about the deal.  

The same opaqueness surrounds the running of NaMo TV. All that is visible is its content:  a mix of speeches, talk shows and promotional features on the government. NaMo TV and the 3D projections are  run by Parag Shah, an ex member of the Chief Minister’s office. Mr Shah refused to come on camera. But then details of government spending have always been hard to come by. The publicity department of Information and Broadcasting Ministry, which Modi controls, in its annual budget for 2011-12 has set aside Rs 1 crore for hiring a PR firm in Delhi to showcase the Gujarat growth story. But expenses of different campaigns are spread out amongst different ministries, making it impossible to pinpoint ownership or a complete figure. RTI activists like Trupti Shah, and Rohit  Prajapati describe how they were repeatedly stonewalled when they tried to get details of spending on some of Modi’s pet schemes. Their RTI application was about the government's claim of providing employment to 65,000 people during the Swami Vivekananda Employment Week. She said in reality the figure was very less. They were also not provided with details on the travelling expenditure of the Chief Minister and other ministers.

As an apparent bid to show transparency in election fundraising, early this year Modi launched Dhan Sangrah scheme. Controversially this set targets for party officials and ministers to raise Rs. 500 crores from the public. The party refused to comment on how much they raised, but reports suggested that the scheme had to be abandoned after rising allegations that it was a form of indirect extortion.

Gujarat Congress spokesperson, Ami Yagnik says that since the voters do 'matdaan' one cannot ask them for 'dhan-daan' for the party. 

To this Jainarayan Vyas, spokesperson for the Gujarat government said that the targets were not for individuals but for party units. He admits that while he managed to meet his targets, many fell short.

In their defence, team Modi claims the publicity machine is low – cost, because it is propelled by adoring volunteers. Like an army of online followers who spread his word, and take on his critics. Rajeeka says that 4-5000 people are involved in retweeting Modi's tweets, and spreading his word. She says that his online followers are genuine.  And yet, soon after Modi’s spin machine declared that he crossed a million followers on Twitter, the hype was somewhat deflated by a piece of news which said almost 40% of his followers were fake.

Rajeeka claims this is a deliberate conspiracy to defame Modi.  So are claims of Modi's vast support base as exaggerated as his achievements? 

The Congress' rather feeble counter narrative to the Modi success narrative are ads which parodies a popular folk song, and describes the Gujarat CM as a ‘phenku’, or exaggerator. A greater worry for the BJP is the powerful Gujarati press, which seems to have done a u-turn on Modi.   In a rare interview, Shreyans Shah, the editor of Gujarat Samachar, the state's largest selling daily says that he 'would  give (Modi) him all compliments for his marketing ability. He is an excellent marketing manager and marketing man and he can sell a fridge on the North Pole' We asked Jainarayan Vyas about the anomalies in the claims being made by the Gujarat CM's spin machine. 

For instance Planning Commission figures show that Gujarat comes 6th in Agriculture, 5th in literacy rate, and 10th in  sex ratio.   Mr Vyas said that while its true that some state's maybe growing faster than Gujarat, that could be because they operate from a lower base. 

 Selling Modi to Gujarat is one thing but how did the Modi PR machine sell Modi to the world?

The origins of the Modi PR hardsell began in the immediate aftermath of the 2002 riots. The ad firm Grey Worldwide which had come up with the concept of Vibrant Gujarat for the tourism department was given a wider and more ambitious brief - to convert Vibrant Gujarat into an investor summit. In the words of a PR professional, it was to create “happy, happening images of Gujarat”.

 

Since 2003, the 5 editions of Vibrant Gujarat claimed to have brought in pledges of

800 billions of dollars, which some claim is unrealistic.

Former Hindu journalist Nina Vyas says that the 'Vibrant Gujarat  website claims that

they had over 800 billion dollars of MOU totally. For the same period of 10 years the

Reserve Bank says that Gujarat got only 7 billion dollars. So, where is 800 billion dollars

and where is 7 billion dollars  ? And the absurdity of the figure is you can see because

the whole of China for the same period received a total of 600 billion dollars FDI. I mean

it’s an utter web of lies'.

When it is pointed out that Gujarat trails at number 5 as an FDI destination, Jai Narayan

Vyas says that it is unfair to only go by FDI figures and that other sectors have

flourished citing the example of auto majors Maruti and Tata. 

 

But the summits may have served their intended purpose. Manoj Ladwa , a UK based

lawyer and a Whitehall insider  is believed to have  laid much of the groundwork that

led to the UK’s U turn on Modi.

He spoke of how anti-Modi voices in the UK like 'Curry King' Lord Gulam Noon and Lord

Meghnad Desai had changed their mind about the Gujarat CM. 

 

Some reports suggested that the change of heart maybe because of lobbying by firms

like APCO Worldwide, the PR firm which replaced Grey in 2009.  

APCO refused to respond to specific questions on lobbying, instead  claimed “ Our

mandate is limited to positioning Gujarat as an investment destination of choice and the

Vibrant Gujarat Summit as a global business and knowledge hub.”

 

Manoj says it is not lobbying but the Vibrant Gujarat success story which brought this

turn around. He said that the starting point was in fact the statement made by the

British High Commissioner after meeting Modi where he said that engagement with

Modi would happen if it was in their national self interest, which would primarily mean

business interest.

But when asked to name big investors that have set up shop after 10 years of hardsell,

he said its 'not about the big ticket but what's happening on the ground with smaller

players across different sectors.'

With victory in sight, any exercise to  point out loopholes in Modi’s claims might be academic. But is using a political PR blitz to paper over a controversial past and win elections good for the health of Indian democracy? 

 

(With inputs from Niha Masih)

  

PR firms creating Modi myth

Ahmedabad: Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi seems to have captured people’s imagination using

his strong PR machinery working in liaison with Gujarat Commissionerate of Info-rmation. The PR firm

would force feed journalists and publications of our times with “stories,” inputs, and “information” to project

superhuman accomplishments of the Gujarat Chief Minister; his Rambo Act in Uttarakhand is one such example,

where no degree of skepticism was exercised initially.

Even as Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party have till date denied hiring PR agencies, a detailed

report published by Open Magazine gives convincing details including facts and figures to prove public relations

agency’s involvement with Modi and the Gujarat government. The report also confirmed the degree to which the

PR organization would handle Modi’s press and interactions with journalists for 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

According to the report, “The Guajarat government is in the process of finalizing a new contract with a PR

agency. The current contract, held by Delhi-based Mutual PR, expires in a couple of months. The government’s

international contract, held worldwide by Apco, an American lobbying firm, ended in March 2013; it was

estimated to be worth Rs. 13 lakh a month. A look at the “Request for Proposal” document, which is confidential

(available only to bidding agencies), reveals the mammoth task that managing the Gujarat Chief Minister’s public

image is. The document issued by the state government says it expects the agency to hard sell ‘positive growth

and developments happening in the state at regular intervals, or as and when asked to do so by the

Commissionerate of Informa-tion’.”

The mammoth task given by Commissionerate of Infor-mation to PR agency include “to help shape favorable

media opinion for Gujarat government, both nationally as well as internationally…and… to position Gujarat as

one of India’s leading states across sectors by increasing visibility and enhancing “top of the mind” recall so as to

make it an ideal destination among various stakeholders.

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Modi’s RatingsBy HARTOSH SINGH BAL APRIL 24, 2012, 9:41 AM 25 Comments

Sam Panthaky/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNarendra Modi in January 2010.

NEW DELHI — Narendra Modi, the leading figure of India’s right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (B.J.P.), didn’t make Time magazine’s list of the 100 most powerful people in the world this year. Midway through the online polling, after Modi’s stock had started to surge,liberals in India organized a counter-campaign. In the end, 256,792 votes were cast for him and 266,684 votes against.

Too bad for Modi: it’s an election year in the state of Gujarat, where he is chief minister, and he is known to be eyeing the country’s prime minister slot. But I, for one, am relieved: finally a defeat for Modi’s formidable PR team, which routinely manages to whitewash his responsibility for fueling sectarian strife and oversells his economic accomplishments, especially to Western journalists.

Modi has been accused of doing little in 2002, the year after he became chief minister, to prevent largely Hindu mobs — led in the main by people affiliated with the B.J.P. and allied organizations — from attacking Muslims throughout the state in retaliation for the death of 58 Hindu pilgrims in a train fire. According to government records, says the BBC, 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed in that outburst, making it one of the worst incidents of anti-Muslim violence since India’s independence.

Since then Modi’s PR machine has worked hard to undo the damage by portraying him as an efficient administrator. Foreign journalists have served that mission well. Their concern for striking a balance in their copy seems to have demanded that they offset the stain of the 2002 riots by praising Modi’s achievements. Modi, in turn, has played his part by granting them access to him, which he rarely does for Indian journalists.

In a 2009 profile for The Atlantic, Robert Kaplan wrote, “I have met Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and both Bushes. At close range,Modi beats

them all in charisma.” Kaplan also relayed some of Modi’s self-described achievements with little question: “What he gave me was not the usual promotional brochures, but long lists of sourced statistics put together by an aide. Gujarat had experienced 10.2 percent annual GDP growth since 2002. It had eight new universities. In recent years, almost half the new jobs created in India were in Gujarat. The state ranked first in poverty alleviation, first in electricity generation.”

Last month, just a week before Time’s online poll — and the very day that a profile of Modi in the magazine made the cover of its South Asia edition — William Antholis, the managing director of the Brookings Institution, posted “India’s Most Admired and Most Feared Politician” online. He, too, extolled Modi’s work: “Gujarat’s economic performance is without peer in India, growing an average 10 percent each year for a decade. That is faster growth than almost any place on earth, including most of China.”

Neither Antholis nor Kaplan treated the facts and figures that Modi’s team threw their way with enough skepticism. The decade of growth for which Modi gets so much credit is the decade during which the Indian economy as a whole averaged over 7.5 percent growth. Several Indian states of a comparable size, like Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, have come close to matching Gujarat (pdf) on this count while doing better at improving living conditions for their citizens, especially marginalized groups.

The 2011 Human Development Report for India states that hunger and malnutrition are worse in Gujarat than in India’s other large states. According to the report, almost 45 percent of children in Gujarat are malnourished. A larger percentage of children go to bed hungry in Gujarat, one of India’s richest states, than in Uttar Pradesh, one of its poorest.

In terms of infant and maternal mortality, Gujarat’s record during the decade that Modi has run the state is poorer than that of the country at large. In 2006-2010, life expectancy in Gujarat was two years shorter than the national average (about 66 years). Gujarat ranked 17th among all Indian states in terms of literacy in 2001, the year Modi took over. Now it ranks 18th.

These figures belie Modi’s reputation as an efficient administrator. But you wouldn’t know it reading the foreign media. In fact, the coverage is so complimentary that Modi’s people have collected it in a 49-page e-book called “The World Lauds Narendra Modi — Excerpts from TIME, Brookings & The Economist!” and made it available on his Web site

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With Modi, AAP taking early lead, can global PR firms better Rahul Gandhi's poll prospects in 2014?Akash Deep Ashok  January 7, 2014 | UPDATED 14:47 IST

In a changed political scenario, where Aam Aadmi Party's Arvind Kejriwal and Bharatiya Janata Party's Narendra Modi have taken a lead at the poll campaign for the 2014 General Elections, the Congress has decided to take professional help to breathe fresh life into the sagging poll prospects of its vice-president Rahul Gandhi.

According to a report in the Hindustan Times, the party has hired Japanese advertising firm Dentsu to popularise and build Gandhi's image as a young, dynamic leader who will empower the common man. The report said the party has roped in another global communications firm, Burson-Marsteller, to take on Modi's and AAP's social media campaigns and make the young leader a force to reckon with in social media.

The grand old party is the latest among major political players to realise the importance of professional help in the run-up to 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Perhaps, the realisation comes in the wake of its disastrous performance in four of the five states which went to the polls, dubbed the semifinal to 2014.

However, with less than 120 days to go before the nation pronounces its verdict, it remains to be seen how much difference the PR firms can make for the Nehru-Gandhi family scion at this stage. More so, since Modi's PR machine started working overtime well in advance and has made incredible leaps ever since.

NaMo, NaMo: How it all began

According to a report published a few months ago in The Indian Express, public relations giant APCO Worldwide was hired to promote Modi's investment and development showpiece 'Vibrant Gujarat' as early as December 2009. In the four years since, its team of 45 experts in 20 countries has also given the Gujarat CM just the push he needed to open doors globally.

But apparently the PR firm's role was not limited to 'Vibrant Gujarat' only.

The report quoted an RTI query revealing an excerpt from the agreement signed between the Modi's government in Gujarat and APCO: "APCO will also gauge the tonality of coverage and identify journalists who can further be Media Ambassadors for Gujarat. The idea is to expand and build on the 'Friends of Gujarat' circle so as to have a sustained programme of endorsement and outreach."

The report said that any such group called 'Friends of Gujarat' did not exist at the time the agreement was signed. Besides, APCO had earlier been in a similar controversy over

promoting notorious Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev through a 'Friends of Kazakhstan' group.

Ever since, a lot of global accolades and recognitions have come for Modi's government in Gujarat through organisations which are related to APCO. For finer details of these, please go through this article here.

Aam aadmi's khaas campaign

AAP applied its own dynamics at creating an incredibly favourable wave in its favour in a very short time all across the nation.

Apart from dedicated teams to further the newly-formed party's cause on the social media platforms, Kejriwal's campaign in the Delhi Assembly polls relied on more than 7,000 dedicated volunteers-students, factory workers, young women and men on sabbatical from their jobs, cab drivers, retired civil servants, who went from house to house telling people why change was not only important but imminent.

In Delhi, the activist-turned-politician's poll strategy was premised on his early experiences with Parivartan, a voluntary group he founded in 1999, and more recently, Anna Hazare's Jan Lokpal movement.

The campaign is likely to make a splash in the party's run for Lok Sabha also since it is crafted to engage with individual voters via nukkad sabhas, constituency-wise manifesto meetings where voters are invited to submit suggestions on ways to improve governance in their local areas, and sustained door-to-door visits.

Far away from the traditional methods of campaigning, these are all novelties the Delhi CM brings to the table at the hustings in 2014.

The challenges for Rahul Gandhi's PR campaign are bigger, because both Modi's and Kejriwal's campaigns are based on the Congress's allegedly wrong policies and a decade-long misrule.

How deep-rooted is the malaise was visible in the empty public gatherings of Gandhi in the recent campaign for the five state Assemblies. It will be an uphill task for any PR firm to further the Congress vice-president's cause at the hustings in face of enormous early gains already made by Modi and Kejriwal.

It remains to be seen how these global firms win the race for Gandhi against time.

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/rahul-gandhi-pr-firm-lok-sabha-elections/1/334891.html

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On December 14, 2009, public relations giant APCO Worldwide was hired to promote Narendra Modi's investment and development showpiece 'Vibrant Gujarat'. In the four years since, its team of 45 experts in 20 countries has also given the Gujarat CM just the push he needed to open doors globally.

An RTI query shows Steven King as one of the members of APCO's "global

project management team" for Vibrant Gujarat. While APCO claims they

don't work for Modi, and that their brief is limited to promoting Gujarat as a

destination for investors, King was named as an official spokesperson for the

Chief Minister in a report by The New York Times.

For her report 'A divisive Indian official is loved by businesses' in February

2011, NYT correspondent Heather Timmons had sought Modi's comments.

"A spokesman for Mr Modi, Steven King, with the Washington public

relations firm APCO Worldwide, wrote in an e-mail responding to questions:

'The government has very highly developed grievance proceedings'," said

the NYT report.

The Modi government signed a deal of Rs 2.25 crore per year at the

prevailing dollar rate in 2010 with APCO. An RTI query shows that APCO's

brief was not restricted to building Gujarat as an investment destination

alone. "APCO will also gauge the tonality of coverage and identify journalists

who can further be Media Ambassadors for Gujarat. The idea is to expand

and build on the 'Friends of Gujarat' circle so as to have a sustained

programme of endorsement and outreach," the agreement stated.

A grouping of Gujaratis living abroad, Friends of Gujarat, didn't exist

incidentally at the time APCO signed the agreement. According to the filings

with US tax authorities, which can be availed from the US Internal Revenue

Service website, it was formed 10 months later, in September 2010.

Since then, Friends of Gujarat has often served as a platform to promote

Modi and his government's governance record. It was also used by the CM

to reach out to the Gujarati community in the US.

The 'Swarnim Gujarat' function held by Friends of Gujarat in New Jersey, to

mark 50 years of the state's creation, was attended by a large delegation

sent by Modi.

Last  month, the 'Global Gujarati Conference' organised by Friends of

Gujarat saw addresses by Modi at multiple venues through 3D projection. In

2011, the Canadian Friends of Gujarat sent one of the largest delegations to

Vibrant Gujarat, including a few parliamentarians.

APCO was in similar controversy over promoting notorious Kazakhstan

President Nursultan Nazarbayev through a 'Friends of Kazakhstan' group

earlier.

Lobbying disclosures made by APCO in the US show that it was in touch

with Eni Falemavaga, a member of the US House of Representatives

Committee on Foreign Affairs and a member of the Subcommittee on Asia

and Pacific, on deals with Kazakhstan as well as Malaysia.

In March this year, it was Falemavaga who strongly appealed to the

Committee on Foreign Affairs to open dialogue with Modi. While

commenting on the post-Godhra 2002 riots, Falemavaga said: "The fact

remains that... India's Supreme Court has not found any evidence against

CM Modi... The US should shift its attitude and extend a hand of friendship

to Modi, just as the European Union and the UK are doing, given that Modi

is the frontrunner among the Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial

candidates."

Despite emails and calls, APCO did not respond to specific queries sent by

The Sunday Express, including on Friends of Gujarat.

Apart from King, the global project management team of APCO for Vibrant

Gujarat includes Gad Ben Ari (former media advisor to ex-Israel PM Yitzhak

Rabin and ex-director general of the most powerful Jewish fund-raising

organisation, Keren Hayesod); Philippe Maze-Sencier (he earlier worked

with the European defence firm EADS and with the European Commission in

Washington); and Barry Schumacher (senior director, APCO Worldwide, and

one of the foremost Washington lobbyists).

Recently, Labour Friends of India, an outfit of the Labour Party in the UK,

invited Modi to address the House of Commons. One of the lobbyists for

Vibrant Gujarat working in the UK is Alex Bigham, political advisor to the

Labour Party.

The new work order issued to APCO in December 2011 stated that "APCO

Worldwide will promote VG 2013 Summit only internationally." Besides,

APCO was given additional responsibility of "supporting Gujarat as tourist

destination" and "attracting case-studies endorsements from learning

institutions".

In October 2012, the Gujarat Solar Park, about which Modi talks often, was

awarded 'Best Project of the Year — Medium Term Duration' by Project

Management Institute (PMI), a global organisation with presence in over

185 countries, in one such 'case-study endorsement'. APCO is also a lobbyist

for PMI

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Narendra Modi's election campaign: what's working, what may notBy a columnistApril 21, 2014First Published: 15:15 IST(21/4/2014)Last Updated: 15:50 IST(21/4/2014)share share on facebookshare on linkedinshare on googleshare on emailmore.

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BJP Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi addresses a public rally in Lakhimpur. (Shadab Raza/ HT photo)

Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi has swamped the Indian media ever since his declaration as BJP election campaign chief in June 2013. With his announcement as BJP's prime ministerial candidate three months later, his TRPs soared. For the past 9 months or so he has been a constant across the media and inevitably occupies mind space.

Now, when more than 40% of the Lok Sabha seats have gone to polls and the D-Day (May 16) is less than a month away, here’s an analysis of what seems to be working for him or what could go wrong.

What seems to be working

10 years of UPA ruleThe Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) has ruled India for the past 10 years. There have been many corruption scams, persistent inflation and low job creation. Economic growth has slowed down to less than 5% in UPA II (though global factors were also partly responsible). The impression of weak leadership and talk of a parallel power centre in Congress chief Sonia Gandhi has not helped.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is no Jawaharlal Nehru. Sonia Gandhi and her son, Rahul Gandhi, do not exude the charisma of Indira Gandhi. All these mean there is a strong anti-

incumbency wave. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and Modi are taking advantage.

Indians love personality cult politicsMahatma Gandhi, Nehru, Jai Prakash Narayan, Indira, Rajiv, Sonia, Rahul, AB Vajpayee; they have all benefited from our love of big personality figures. The Indian voter likes towering leaders who have a larger than life image and are bigger than their parties. These leaders are charismatic. At the moment, Modi is filling this void for some. They believe all evils faced by India will vanish if Modi becomes PM.

Good oratorModi speaks good Hindi, despite not being from north India. Hindi is the most popular language in the country and is understood in most parts of the country. Though not a Vajpayee, he is a good public speaker. He has the ability to hold big crowds with his speech wherein he attacks and mocks the opposition.

TINA factorAt this point, Modi has no competition. No other party has officially declared a PM nominee. AIADMK chief J Jayalalithaa has indicated her PM ambition, but is not a serious contender yet. The Third Front has crashed before take-off due to the abundance of PM aspirants. The Congress has shied away from naming a PM candidate, citing democratic principles. Arvind Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party are challengers, but by political yardstick, not there yet. BJP is projecting "there is no alternative " to Modi and is confident that it is working.

Virtual capture of social mediaModi is the undisputed king of social media among Indian politicians. Nobody is near him. The other top contender, Rahul Gandhi, has little social media presence. Kejriwal is on Twitter and gathering ‘followers’, but trails Modi by a fair distance. Attention to detail and excellent public relations machinery, which ensures Modi’s personalised messages reach out to his ‘followers’ and ‘fans’, are helping the BJP.

What could go wrong

BJP's internal fighting The perceived one-man show is not going down well with everyone in the BJP. Senior leader LK Advani has shown his displeasure several times. No other leader is holding rallies as him, helping Modi (not that he seems to be too bothered). For the so-called anti-Modi camp, an opportunity may arise if he falls short of a majority on his own and needs allies. Some who would like to ally with the BJP might not necessarily be agreeable with Modi in charge and this is where Advani and other big leaders will have an opening. 

2002 riots and polarisation of Muslim votesThe opposition and media glare is on post-Godhra riots. With the notion that Hindu votes get divided and Muslims vote en bloc, every party eyes the minority vote. No matter what the PR spin is, the minority community is unlikely to side with the BJP and Modi.

Poor selection of candidatesWith opinion polls showing the BJP emerging as the single largest party, leaders from other parties are jumping on the Modi bandwagon. The BJP is embracing all-comers and also giving some of them tickets. This demoralises the local leadership and workers. Some alliances such

as the one with N Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP and Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP are being resented locally. Moreover, the party also has to contend with anti-incumbency against sitting MPs who have been re-nominated.

The BJP is fighting the general elections much in the manner of the US presidential polls. It believes that Modi will wave his hand to the crowds at rallies and people will vote for him and the BJP, no matter who the local candidate is. This style is being tried first time in Indian politics. May 16 will tell us if it succeeded or not.

- See more at: http://www.hindustantimes.com/comment/indiapoliticswatch/narendra-modi-s-election-campaign-what-s-working-what-may-not/article1-1210544.aspx#sthash.EWqs0yQt.dpuf

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India Shining – Lies, And The PR Firms That Sell Them

By Raja Swamy

21 April, 2004countercurrents.org

The BJP-NDA’s “India Shining” PR campaign is a project of the global PR giant ‘Grey Global Group’ (http://www.prweek.com/thisweek/index.cfm?ID=203981). The 7th largest PR firm in the world, Grey Global’s operations have earned notoriety in the United States on account of the activities of its subsidiary, APCO. The website http://prwatch.org documents APCO’s activities in support of such stalwarts as Philip Morris, the tobacco giant, the American Plastics Council, a lobbying group for the plastics industries (plastics are derivatives of petrochemicals), and more recently, in setting up a ‘task force’ for the “reconstruction” of Iraq – in other words, the cornering of lucrative contracts in an invaded third world country, for their US corporate clients. Members of the board on this ‘task force’ include political bigwigs like Steven Solarz, and Richard Allen, the former National Security Advisor under Ronald Reagan. Additionally, the CEO of APCO has ties with the fundamentalist Christian Coalition, an important supporter of the Bush administration (http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/1996Q3/cohen.html).

What does this say about the nature of the BJP’s efforts to win this general election? First, it reveals the fact that the BJP has sought help from a corporation with an established track record of defending the indefensible. While the real state of India’s economy teeters on the brink of all out devastation for the vast majority of working people, particularly in rural areas (see http://www.rupe-india.org for a devastating analysis of the real state of India’s economy), the BJP would like to project itself as the party that brought ‘prosperity’ to India: a classic inversion of reality! In order to do this, they have utilized all sorts of imagery and noise, as iconic representations of the BJP’s supposed ‘successes.’ Images of the artificially kneed, and rather tiresome personality of the Prime Minister, with his arm raised towards a glowing scenic background, are supposed to convey a sense of immaculate power and vision – an assertion neither borne out by facts on the ground, nor even remotely echoed in the contrary reality of grotesque Hitlerian salutes of Hindutva accompanying 5 years of fascistic violence, murder, and destruction.

Displaying greater loyalty to Hindutva, than to India, this Prime Minister and his cabinet of murderously anti-poor and anti-minority fascists, have repeatedly and brazenly assaulted the foundations of free India’s democratic institutions, its basis in the constitution, its heritage of pluralistic possibilities, despite all their flaws and deficiencies, and the human and civil rights of hundreds of millions of India’s Muslim and Christian citizens. Grey Global’s PR machinery is employed to mask

this and present the Prime Minister as some sort of prophetic visionary perched atop the dizzy clouds of false achievements. While the loot taken from India has enabled western corporations and their domestic clients to make a literal killing at the cost of unemployment, malnourishment, and miserable starvation deaths throughout rural India, the managers of state find it appropriate to wave glossy images of contentment as if imagery and noise could mask the latter realities. It is an insult to the intelligence of any fair-minded human being, that the author and protagonist of the terrible genocide of Muslims in Gujarat, the fascistic Mr. Modi, pioneered the use of the grotesquely irrelevant term ‘feel good factor,’ while addressing hordes of Indian and NRI capitalists a few months ago(http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=47280). Mr. Modi remains a warm host to capitalism, Indian and global – no condemnation from the U.S. government; Ambassador Blackwill, stated that he was “disturbed” while the massacres took place in 2002.

Secondly, the reliance of the BJP on Grey Global’s PR skills, reveals the extent to which the most egregious abandonment of the social development dreams of free India, goes hand in hand with a treacherous adherence to neoliberal led American imperialism. The BJP is firmly entrenched within a framework of loyalty to U.S. imperialism, and its primary beneficiaries, neoliberal capitalism. As a party that has gone beyond any other, to serve the interests of international (and domestic lackey) capitalism, the BJP is projected as the ‘favorite,’ by domestic and global corporate media. In addition, pro-Hindutva and neoliberal-friendly U.S. based outfits like the OFBJP (Overseas Friends of the BJP), have dispatched leaders and members to campaign for the BJP in India (http://in.rediff.com/election/2004/apr/13iype.htm)! It is quite a travesty how the phrase “India shining” and various permutations of it such as “shining India” and “feel good factor” have dominated the corporate media, without any reference to the global PR corporations responsible for them.

The Public Relations industry itself has a fascinating history, superbly documented in Alex Carey’s “Taking the Risk out of Democracy” (http://www.press.uillinois.edu/s97/carey.html). The importance of generating and mobilizing consent among the working class, towards the policies and interests of capitalism, has distinguished the United States for half a century, from standard forms of totalitarian control. The PR industry arose as a response of the ruling class, to the radicalization of the American working class in the early part of the twentieth century. Its growth and functioning drew admiration from no less a fascist totalitarian than Hitler, who while praising Allied propaganda techniques in World War 1, decried the crass incompetence of German propaganda as a factor in their defeat. This admiration and critique formed the basis for the renewed and much more effective assault for “hearts and minds” by the Nazi party after it came to power in 1933. As the former head of Hitler’s propaganda film department, Franz Hippler stated in an interview with Bill Moyers, propaganda relies on one important technique – simplification and repetition (http://www.counterpunch.org/jackson04162004.html). The U.S. PR industry now dominates a world in which ‘globalization’ is synonymous with the expansion of U.S. imperialist power and the interests of its corporate beneficiaries. It excels in setting up front organizations and manipulating the perception of corporate and government actions, in addition to selling products, brands and ideas.

Given this sordid history, it is not at all surprising that the fascistic BJP has turned to an American PR firm, which has an established track record of painting toxic plastics as good for infants and nursing mothers, opposition to giant tobacco corporations as unscientific, and the imperialistic plunder of Iraq as ‘reconstruction.’ In stark Orwellian terms, the BJP’s “India Shining” PR campaign is a fair equivalent of ‘poison is good for you’ style propaganda, whose roots, like the BJP’s own ideological roots, lie in a history of fascistic, totalitarian deception and genocidal thuggery. It goes without saying that beyond the “feeling” and beneath the “shine” lies the disturbing truth of ugly manipulation, in the shameless service of capitalist greed and imperialist domination, and in opposition to the true interests of the majority of India’s people, especially workers, peasants and all oppressed communities of India. The ‘CEO’ of Andhra Pradesh in response to farmer suicides in the countryside, once dispatched teams of psychiatrists: to alter the perception of the world among those responding in utter desperation to the cruel outcomes of the very policies he and his friends fervently promote. The BJP’s Grey Global Group “India Shining” project takes this venality to soaring new heights, through simplification and repetition of lies– and with a little help from their U.S. corporate friends. How appropriate: an imperialist corporation which treats lying to people like it were a professional science, is charged with representing the “shining” performance of the BJP led NDA government! Can things get more bizarrely blatant that this?