http://indianexpress.com/elections/goa-assembly-elections-2017/guided-by-trained-doctors-bjp-and-cong-diagnose-goa-go-micro-win-macro-4495222/
Guided by trained doctors, BJP and Congress diagnose Goa: Go micro, win macro The BJP is contesting 36 seats, but the booth management covers entire Goa. Written by Smita Nair | Panjim | Updated: January 28, 2017 Dr Rajendra Phadke (third from left), leads BJP's campaign in Goa. (Source: Express Photo by Smita Nair) 'Booth jeeto, desh jeeto' AT Pernem, right before she took the microphone on Thursday, a clove-flavoured ayurvedic throat cleanser was slipped into Union minister Smriti Irani's hands. Campaign management can be a lot of things, and if one were to sit with Dr Rajendra Phadke, he will tell you that sometimes it can be as crucial as a "timely clove". A 'Pramod Mahajan alumnus', Phadke, a trained doctor, is the man the BJP and Manohar Parrikar has chosen to win Goa. Having conducted several state elections in north and west India, Phadke is a member of the party's campaign core committee along with several others from Maharashtra, Karnataka and other BJP states to help shape the Goa campaign. Inside the BJP election office, Phadke is busy overseeing a team of six BJP workers from Aurangabad, Maharashtra. The team is setting up a call centre with multiple phone lines. In two days, they would have made multiple calls (at least 2,000 in a single shift) to booth in-charges of the state's 40 constituencies as they mobilise crowd for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's rally on Saturday. They are following the BJP style of functioning -- "booth jeeto, desh jeeto", Phadke explains. The BJP is contesting 36 seats, but the booth management covers the entire state. The average voter turnout per booth is 650, and the state has 1,642 voting booths. "We are first calling the booth nodals to get crowd for the rally," Phadke says. Every shift, the figures will be updated and follow-ups taken. The party expects a turnout of 50,000. Overseeing elections since the 1990s, Phadke, who carries all sorts of medicines for BJP workers, says the mood remains the same but the functioning is "very fast phased" now. He has just figured six WhatsApp groups, percolating to the lowest party worker -- where in the next five days voice messages of Narendra Modi, Manohar Parrikar and other party leaders will be broadcast. "Elections are about motivation, constant support," he says. Party office in-charge Ravindra Sathe, a Mumbaikar, has the logistics and plans for various departments that will work until the last vote is cast -- social media cell, logistics, women's cell, etc. In the room are people mapping mood of the voters, starting with the "interest shown to come for Modi rally". Sadanand Tanavde, secretary of Goa's BJP wing, says, "Everything is checked and cross-checked. There is no room for errors." Sathe is a top office-bearer of the Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini, an institute that prepares legislators with their responsibilities. Most BJP candidates in Maharashtra were said to be trained by him, since three months Sathe has finished teaching legislator duties to all 36 Goa candidates. Having arrived in October 2016, Phadke says his early "patrolling days" were spent with locals gauging the "BJP mood". His diaries, listing demographics, can put a statistician to shame. Flagged across each constituencies are voter profiles, their communities, and identity details. "If I am told that the locals in one constituency are Kannada speakers, I have the detail of which region of Karnataka they come from. No election planning can be done without getting these details right," he says. The team says even the star campaigners have been picked and put in constituencies matching their language and background. Smriti Irani, for instance, was allocated Calangute as she is familiar with work there, while Ananth Kumar went to a belt with Karnataka demographics. Preparing for the election meetings has been a major task for BJP. The party, which works on absolute briefings, found no one attending more than two meetings. "It took us two weeks only to get that corrected. I told them that a person can have more than five meetings a day -- I have spoilt the Goans," Phadke says. Every detail in the office is in writing "There is no way you will say you were not told. If I need crowd on the ground, voters in the booth, I need everything marked and written," says Phadke as he scolds a worker who delayed on a work promise. His diaries, similarly, have minute detailing until February 4. "Parrikar saw the diary I had kept in 2012 election and said I am being dispatched to Goa since I have a work-diary like this," he laughs. The 2012 notes have the voting patterns, booth ratios, booths BJP won, ones it lost, and every "microscopic detail". Sathe and he say the Modi rally will be the final touch after a year long campaign work. "His speeches are from his style of working. While there will be briefings, he looks to speak a vision – a longer duration," Phadke says. Party workers agree that while talking points have been shared with Modi, the PM will mostly rely on Parrikar for the last proof reading. In the last stages of star campaigning, Phadke is now busy detailing speakers on the traditional greetings. "Not that they don't know, but it helps. In Goa, they know you are on their side if you say 'Dev Tujhe Bare karo' (God be with you). These little details matter." 'Congress believes in decentralisation' CONGRESS leader Digvijaya Singh recalls an election rally of Sanjay Gandhi in 1977. "The biggest I have seen --10 lakh crowd in Bhopal," he says. "We were wiped out that election. So do not talk to me about rallies." Singh says this Goa election for the Congress is about "door-to-door campaigning". Singh says its mostly a low-key campaign with focus on grassroots-level infrastructure, instead of scaling public meetings. Singh has just seen Sachin Pilot off, and is busy looking forward for the next speaker. Along with Dr Chellakumar, AICC secretary in charge of Goa and Karnataka, Singh has been assigned Goa elections by the party. Rahul Gandhi's public meeting on January 30 has been strategically planned at Mapusa, says M K Shaikh, a retired principal and now vice-president of Goa Congress -- "a little closer to the interiors, still close to the capital, so that the impact is felt across, right till the hinterland." A trained doctor, Chellakumar, a Tamil Nadu native and a former MLA with record fights with M Karunanidhi and late J Jayalalithaa, has been "studying Goa for three years" now. Traveling between Chennai, Bengaluru and Goa, he has his own "list of Goan traits". Prepared between these three men, Rahul's talking points have sourced all the "failures" of the BJP government in the state. "We call it the chargesheet," says Chellakumar, almost convinced. The office is not as rigorous as a BJP "war room" but the work continues. Of 40 Congress campaigners in a list beginning with Sonia Gandhi, only 25 have addressed public meetings. The others, a lower rung party worker says, are either "cancelling at the last minute" or are "busy with Uttar Pradesh". On the day Modi speaks in Goa, they have slotted Margaret Alva, former Union minister. Passes are being ironed and crowd estimates being worked for the Rahul Gandhi rally: Chellakumar expects 50,000; Shaikh, a Goan, picks 30,000 as a "practical" number. One schedule the election team worked around was the afternoon lunch. "The Goan likes his fish curry, and nothing in the world is more important than that," Shaikh says. "So we had to work around the time limits." Candidates have been called and proper assessments will be done early Sunday morning. At the offices they are debating on the number of buses to be pulled, 150 being the last figure. "The potential of each candidate has been assessed," Shaikh says, "and each has been given a crowd figure to match." Between the AICC and GPCC, the party's Goa wing, they agree the style of mobilising changed since 2014, soon after Luizinho Faleiro took over as GPCC president. "The first step we took was to reverse the set-up and look for booth committees, with block committees guiding them," Shaikh says. With district and state-level mechanisms coming later, Congress leaders hope they have mastered crowd mobilisation and strengthening vote banks this time around. "The first detail we executed was getting new faces. Corruption is something that the opposition keeps alleging. Now Manohar Parrikar has two former Congress MLAs who he used to fight, alleging corruption -- one from Dabolim and the other from Cumbharjua," laughs Chellakumar. In the last six months, 23 new faces were picked and given tickets. "We are starting fresh. The door-to-door campaigns are in full swing," Chellakumar says. Having conducted many Congress elections in South India, Goa remains a "good ground" for him. The party is contesting 37 seats and supporting three Independent candidates. While the manifesto and literature echo the same points -- of "throwing the casinos off Mandovi" rive and introducing "sustainable mining", Rahul Gandhi has been briefed on the local fault lines. He is expected to echo the local sentiment of special economic status for Goa, Shaikh says. The team has also pulled out all history -- "just in case anyone has forgotten". In the last few months, most briefings have been heavy on historic dates. "Goa was liberated when Jawaharlal Nehru was the Prime Minister, and the opinion poll, the first time the country chose a referendum, was (held) in 1967 under Indira Gandhi. Later, Rajiv Gandhi gave the promised statehood. We will remind them (voters) all this on January 30," says Shaikh, who has worked meticulously on talking points for Rahul Gandhi. Besides the fact that there is no Modi wave this year, Chellakumar says, the anti-incumbency feeling is against the BJP. "Manohar Parrikar didn't get a penny of the promised Rs 35,000 crore looted by illegal mining. Worse, the communal episodes have shown the Catholics that this was the wrong party to support. I am basing this as my analysis," Chellakumar says, as he prepares for the last bunch of speakers expected to arrive before Rahul Gandhi. "The simple fact," Singh says, "is that Modi believes in centralisation. His way of working as Prime Minister shows that. We at the Congress believe in decentralisation. We have left it to our party field workers -- January 30 will be their day." http://indianexpress.com/elections/goa-assembly-elections-2017/guided-by-trained-doctors-bjp-and-cong-diagnose-goa-go-micro-win-macro-4495222/