Dhumal releases ‘Political Marketing in India’ by Dr. Arun Kumar Sharma

Brand Politics

Populism lessons in governance

Shimla: Even though political parties deny existence of political marketing, yet they adopt all marketing principles to convert potential support into votes for ensuring handsome returns in elections, a study has established.

Politics of exclusiveness is now giving way to the politics of development warranting emphasis on good governance, says Arun Sharma, who is giving final shape to a book based on a five year study he conducted.

A first of it kind study after taking all stakeholders into account, which included voters, mediapersons and strategists of political parties from all hues, concluded that political parties at election time turn sellers and sellers only create and satisfy new desires in consumers.

“A market oriented party is not concerned with changing people’s minds, but in following them. Vote bank politics very much resembles ‘loyal brand recall’ for a product,” says Sharma.

Of late economic wellbeing and rising aspirations of middle class has put a strain on political parties compelling them to modify their programs.

Sharma points out, “the ‘Feel Good’ or ‘Shinning India’ campaign of NDA was well countered by ‘Congress Ka Haath Aaam Admi Ke Saath’ in the 2004 general elections.

Candidates to be successful have to understand their market, which consist of voters – their needs, aspirations and the constituencies they intend to represent.

In order to garner support of maximum voters, political parties try to ascertain felt needs of voters and then offer sops as solutions. Political parties by marketing promises to solve the problems only follow the marketing concept, says Sharma.

However, it is the data thrown up by the study which dispels many perceptions of the electoral process.

Interestingly, where as all the 50 politicians interviewed for the study felt that no political party fulfilled the election promises they held out before the ballot is cast, there where at least 12 percent voters who held that polictial parties did fulfill these promises.

For political parties, emotional issues, corruption, leadership, anti-incumbency got precendence over economic issues, whereas for the voter it was bread and butter issues like unemployment that matterred more.

Political parties held out ideology as the bedrock of a manifesto that found use for electioneering purposes but voters were not so enthused about ideology in a manifesto that did not meet their aspirations.

Both voters and leaders considered that exit polls and opinion polls were influenced by political parties but only 80 percent of the politicians and 66 percent of the voters wanted them banned.

Interestingly while all politicians felt that exit polls and opinion polls influenced polling only 57 percent voters felt that they had any impact on the crucial electoral process.

Over probable causes of defeat, voters and political parties were in agreement.

Election management, better management by opponents, candidate choice, party policy and inside sabotage; ranked in that order were marked as the likely causes for losing a election.