How a Secret BJP War Room Mobilized Female Voters to Win the Indian Elections

In April, an unassuming aged gathering successful New Delhi’s furnishings marketplace housed astir 30 youngsters. Some were hunched implicit their laptops crunching information connected Excel oregon analyzing a vigor map, portion others huddled to sermon strategy. These were engineering graduates, economists, governmental scientists, and others. There were bureau chairs, desks, and a mates of achromatic boards.

The full setup could easy person passed arsenic a startup office, but it wasn’t. This was an predetermination warfare room.

From there, Sapiens Research laminitis Rimjhim Gour’s squad served arsenic the brains of Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, oregon BJP. The party’s elder enactment had entrusted Gour with mobilizing 12.5 cardinal pistillate voters crossed India, and her squad spent their days crunching humanities polling trends, utilizing information to pinpoint captious constituencies, browsing WhatsApp for real-time on-ground updates, and shaping electoral strategies to usher successful BJP for a 3rd consecutive term.

Gour’s squad was successful: Modi was sworn successful arsenic the Prime Minister connected June 9 aft the BJP formed the authorities done an confederation with 293 seats. India’s wide elections hap erstwhile successful 5 years, and successful 2024, a record-breaking 642 cardinal Indians voted. Of the full voters polled, 312 cardinal were women. This was BJP’s expansive experiment: The enactment wanted to micro-target and mobilize pistillate voters, and hired radical similar Gour to marque it happen—revealing, says Amogh Dhar Sharma, writer of the forthcoming publication The Backstage of Democracy: India’s Election Campaigns and the People Who Manage Them, “the hidden powerfulness of a caller technocratic elite that has go captious for parties and politicians to combat elections and triumph votes successful India.”

“In astir places [in India], electorates who are registered but not voting are ever women,” says Gour, who antecedently worked arsenic a media strategist astatine Indian Political Action Committee, the legendary steadfast wide recognised for propelling Modi to triumph successful 2014. Dressed successful an off-white salwar kameez, with a large brace of circular glasses keeping her hairsbreadth disconnected her face, Gour is suave and confident, and fluently switches betwixt English and Hindi. “That’s erstwhile it struck maine that if we person to mobilize someone, it has to beryllium women; they marque up 50% of the electorate but inactive haven’t been tapped into wholly successful a systematic approach.”

Over the past decade, the Indian electioneering scenery has been overhauled by the advent of societal media, data-driven insights, and governmental consultants. “I deliberation the 2024 Indian wide predetermination confirms … the inordinate relation of run professionals successful Indian elections,” says Sharma. From telephone centers being utilized for “screening” enactment supporters, to WhatsApp for real-time updates, and a specialized app for reporting and documenting meetings, each instrumentality served a unsocial intent successful this BJP campaign. “The velocity astatine which these technologies are being embraced by parties and the increasing accent connected them is surely unique,” says Sharma.

The BJP’s usage of exertion and societal platforms has evolved arsenic authorities has, arsenic they person gone from being niche tools to indispensable infrastructure. The BJP emerged arsenic the highest spender connected governmental ads connected Meta platforms this election. If the 2019 predetermination was characterized arsenic the “WhatsApp Election” due to the fact that of the excessive usage of the messaging platform, the 2024 run was the “YouTube Election.” It marked an unprecedented usage of YouTube influencers by BJP that featured softball questions with governmental candidates and paid promotions. While rival parties worked to drawback up, the BJP inactive leads the battalion with dedicated cyber troops for year-round contented creation—and not conscionable during elections.