Cover Story: BJP: Campaign: Turning Tide

The thrust of the party's electioneering will be to project that the BJP can also govern during a crisis.

The BJP has a very simple plan for the election campaign. It will identify itself with the Indian Army at every given opportunity. The official line at the party's daily briefing at the Ashoka Road headquarters is that Kargil must not be politicised. But the message will be hammered home without being explicitly stated that Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the BJP are inextricably linked to the victory in Kargil. Vajpayee and Kargil will be the twin theme of the BJP campaign. A victorious nation; popular leader; a patriotic party ... the BJP believes it has a potent cocktail for Election '99.

Leaders like L.K. Advani, M.M. Joshi, Sushma Swaraj, Pramod Mahajan, Uma Bharati and the various chief ministers will also hit the campaign trail in their hired aircraft and helicopters. But this time round the party will not project a collective leadership. It will focus solely on Vajpayee's personality. Sapne adhoore, karne hain pure (unfulfilled dreams have to be realised), one of the ad lines being considered, gives a sense of the mood that Vajpayee would project.

Every morning for the past month a small group has been gathering at the BJP headquarters. Besides the party general secretaries who happen to be in town -- K.N. Govindacharya, M. Venkaiah Naidu and Narendra Modi -- the gathering invariably includes journalist Arun Shourie and lawyer Arun Jaitley, two successful professionals who have been long-standing BJP supporters and have now been included on the campaign committee headed by Advani. There is a quick brainstorming session; the morning papers are carefully scanned, the likely developments of the day considered and the party line for the daily 3 p.m. briefing decided.

The thrust of the rhetoric is to counter the Congress attack on the government's handling of the Kargil crisis. A typical BJP statement declares, "Sonia Gandhi and the Congress continue to have a warped perception about matters of national interest and pride. They continue to deny that India has scored a decisive military victory and an unprecedented diplomatic success."

The party has linked itself to the victory celebrations by constantly encouraging the jawans. "Humne apne aap ko army se jod liya hai (We have linked ourselves to the army)," says Mahajan. Jaitley believes that the Congress' carping makes the party come across as unpatriotic dissenters at a time of national celebration. "We say great victory of the jawans. They say intelligence failure. We are the cheerleaders. They are the critics."

To gauge the public response to Kargil, the BJP had commissioned an elementary opinion poll among a small sample of 500 voters spread across 20 villages in UP, Haryana, and Rajasthan. Titled "People's Perception on Kargil", the report by the Research and Development Initiative showed encouraging results: an 80 per cent approval rating of Vajpayee's handling of the situation in contrast to the 8 per cent who believed Sonia would have done better. Findings that bolster the party's ability to govern during times of national crisis.

But the sustained Congress pinpricks are now annoying the ruling party. The BJP plans to respond by citing figures about the thousands of Indian soldiers killed in Sri Lanka in a misadventure begun by Rajiv Gandhi. But Vajpayee will never be linked to any mudslinging. "Sonia can abuse him. But he will not stoop to her level," says Mahajan. Publicity material -- complete with Vajpayee's picture -- will strike a positive note and talk about his hopes for the future. It will have no negative rhetoric.

Grabbing the ultra-nationalistic space comes easily to a party that is quick to toe the I-am-more-patriotic-than-you line. With Kargil transforming the national mood, the BJP will find it has more takers for its brand of nationalism this time.

WORD PERFECT
Expert advice, enough money, concrete ideas -- the BJP is sitting pretty

ADVERTISING

There's been a great deal of jostling among advertising agencies to land the BJP account. The BJP usually hires consultants who work in tandem with the party's spin doctors. During the last general elections an in-house team called Taskforce BJP oversaw most of the print campaigns. This time the Delhi-based Equus did considerable lobbying for the account. Eventually, however, the choice narrowed down to Trikaya Grey and a small consultancy named Dhar & Hoon. It was finally decided that Dhar & Hoon would work in tandem with Taskforce BJP. The small firm was chosen because it arranged for Tara Sinha to handle the BJP's work. Besides being a top advertising professional, Sinha has long been considered a BJP sympathiser.

MONEY

With its strong moorings in the trading community the BJP has rarely been strapped for cash. Now that it has completed a year and a half in office and is in a position to make another bid for power, it is the most cash-rich party in the electoral fray. The central kitty has over Rs 10 crore raised through membership subscriptions and the Ajeevan Sahyog (lifelong support) programme. With the Vajpayee regime accelerating the process of liberalisation, even business houses suspicious of swadeshi have started funding the party. While the Congress has always relied on 150 mega donors, the bulk of BJP funding comes from the network of traders loyal to the Sangh Parivar. With the economy slowly picking up, the BJP will not be strapped for cash during Elections '99.

MANIFESTO

For the first time the BJP has decided not to release a separate manifesto. It was originally planned that the BJP and its allies would update the National Agenda for Governance, take inputs from new allies like the DMK and release that as a common manifesto. The picture changed after Kargil as it was now decided that the National Democratic Alliance should give serious thought to a well-produced manifesto. A sleek document is planned. It will concentrate on principles of governance and suggest broad policy guidelines without going into specifics. Defence Minister George Fernandes and External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh are in charge of the drafting. As both men have been preoccupied with Kargil, there has been a delay in the preparation of the manifesto.