If one had to pick a single stand-out factor in the Congress’s unexpected success in the 2004 Lok Sabha election, what would that be?
The answer should be a no-brainer. It was the coinage of the brilliant line, “Congress ka haath aam aadmi ke saath (The hand of the Congress is with the common man).” The slogan placed the Congress party firmly on the side of the common man at a time when its principal rival, the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), had become an ambassador for ‘India Shining’.
India Shining was nationalistic, in perfect alignment with the pro-corporate image of the BJP, and most importantly, it suggested that the country had liberated itself from the grinding poverty that had been its fate in the more than half a century since its independence in 1947.
File picture of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Credit: PTI
The stunning revelation in the book, Don’t Forget 2004: Advertising Secrets of an Impossible Election Victory, written by Jayshree M Sundar, is that the game-changer slogan was not a product of the Congress’s sharp strategic thinking but emerged from brainstorming sessions that Sundar, at the time the head of the Delhi office of the international advertising agency, Leo Burnett, held with her team.
The irony doesn’t end here. Sundar is on record in the book that she and her team were political novices. She is unfamiliar with the Congress set-up, except perhaps for passing glimpses of Congress leaders on television.
The first exploratory call from the Congress office is from someone called Shamim on January 6, 2004. She doesn’t know Shamim, whom she refers to simply as Shamim, with no second name. When Shamin says that he’s calling from Salman Khurshid’s office, Sundar’s first reaction is “The ex-minister? That Salman Khurshid?”
Shamim Akhtar, by the way, is a fixture at Salman Khurshid’s home and office; no journalist or political junkie worth her salt can claim not to know him.
After her first meeting with Khurshid, Sundar’s takeaway is that he seems like a nice man, “like one of us.” She says, “I guess we had a different impression of politicians.”
Returning to her office, Sundar tells her team, “I know this political party arena is alien as compared to our regular world of FMCG [fast-moving consumer goods], Durables, Services and so on… How many of you are familiar with this world? Follow it? Interested in it?”
Sundar is not surprised to find that the bulk of her team, predominantly young and inexperienced, is either only moderately or not at all interested in politics. She admits to herself that she herself falls in the “moderate knowledge category of people.”
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Yet it is this novice team that won the Congress’s election campaign account. And it is this team that rode the roller coaster to the end of the Congress campaign – and watched the underdog beat the formidable Vajpayee package, consisting of his charisma, the BJP’s endless resources and the media’s unhidden adulation of the then prime minister.
Vajpayee’s popularity was sky-high. The BJP, in fact, trailed him by several percentage points in most surveys and opinion polls. The collective wisdom of pundits though was that the Vajpayee magic was enough to see the BJP through. As against this, the Congress was staring at defeat, having spent the eight years prior to 2004 in the wilderness and going into the election with the very tentative and reclusive Sonia Gandhi. She had no previous experience and her foreign origin made her job that much more difficult.
Development of a winning strategy
Sundar’s team had its own daunting, first-time challenges. Given only a week to present their pitch, they decide to deal with the Congress as they would with any consumer brand. As she recalls early on in the book, she has worked on “blades and razors, hard liquor and male innerwear among many others…”
She tells her team, “We have all worked on things we don’t understand fully – we have to be professional and treat it like a brand…” But Congress is not a shaving cream or men’s underwear. It’s an iconic political party with more than a century of existence and a distinct ideology. Sure enough, there is resistance from some team members. Sundar drops her account planner from the campaign, inferring from his body language that he probably supports the BJP.
Over the following week, the team plunges into research, scouring mountains of newspaper back issues to zero in on the BJP’s strengths and weaknesses. The strengths are evident enough: a supremely confident prime minister, and his party’s India Shining campaign which has the well-off rooting for the BJP and on which an estimated Rs 300 crore has already been spent.
The weakness is just one: India Shining does not address the woes of the vast majority of India’s people who, contrary to BJP’s propaganda, are still desperately poor with no avenues for gainful employment. India Shining has nothing to offer to farmers, middle-class investors and women at large.
“There is a class of people for whom India is not shining,” her team concludes. It’s a discovery that will form the core of the agency’s strategy for winning the Congress account.
Sundar confabulates with her team and decides to commission a quick survey of the ‘left-out’ class of people, a kind of vox populi that would bring to life actual voices from the ground. The footage is stunning: Most people interviewed have not heard of India Shining and they say almost in unison that over the past five years their lives have changed for the worse: “Bahut bekar ho gaya hai (It has become worse).” The vox populi is the star of the agency’s presentation and it’s a winner with the Congress.
Political novices at work
The interesting thing here is that Congress is as surprised by the findings as Sundar’s team was when they put them together. Clearly, Congress had no idea of the desperation on the ground and had to be awakened to the truth by an advertising agency with zero knowledge of party politics.
Indeed, Sundar’s lack of grounding in politics shows up from time to time in the book. She counts Haryana as one of the three states the Congress lost in the 2003 assembly polls. But the Congress actually swept the Haryana election which was held in 2005 after its Lok Sabha victory.
In another place, she refers to Congress strategy meetings held in the “Lodhi Estate bungalow of a Mumbai-based Minister of Parliament.” She obviously meant a Member of Parliament. Besides, no minister in Vajpayee’s council of ministers (the opposition will not have had a central minister) is likely to have handed his house to the Congress for the latter to plan its moves against the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
Yet these could be minor quibbles considering Sundar’s team came up with a masterstroke in the Aam Aadmi slogan.
The day before their scheduled pitch, Sundar’s team review the package they have put together. The team decides that any ad campaign aiming to demolish India Shining must pose counter questions.
From this emerges the powerful line, “Mujhe kya mila? (What did I get?).” The government did X, Y, Z things but ‘Mujhe kya mila?’ Soon ‘Mujhe kya mila’, which is seen as too individualistic is amended to “Aam Aadmi ko kya mila?”
Says Sundar: “Thus is born the slogan ‘Aam Aadmi ke saath’. And the symbol of the Congress party being the hand gets integrated into the line, ‘Congress ka haath aam aadmi ke saath’ (The hand of the Congress is with the common man).”
The slogan is a winner and in time would resonate on the ground, with critics and admirers alike complimenting Congress on its brainwave. Yet Congress itself is far from impressed. The Congress team, tasked with picking one among a dozen bidders for its ad campaign, likes Sundar’s presentation. The vox populi in particular stirs its interest. But the party barely acknowledges the Aam Admi slogan, and indeed, appears happy to junk it to save costs.
After Sundar’s agency wins the pitch and the next rounds of talks begin, a major impediment proves to be the budget. The Congress team suggests axing the first phase of the ad campaign whose selling point, its bedrock, is the Aam Aadmi slogan.
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Sundar is distraught and decides to fight back. As she writes: “As I watch I see a decision veering towards cutting off Phase I of the campaign, ‘Aam Aadmi ko kya mila?’ I brace myself to take on the fight. Under no circumstances am I going to allow this to happen.”
“Aam aadmi ko kya mila is the headline thought, leading to the sign-off: Congress ka haath aam aadmi ke saath. … In my mind, this part of the campaign has been created to counter phrases with a massive currency like ‘feel good factor’ and ‘India Shining’. India Shining (Lekin) Aaam Aadmi ko kya mila? This is the connection that we want Indians to make.”
This discussion takes place at 10 Janpath where previously Sundar’s team has met Sonia Gandhi. This time Rahul Gandhi, who sporadically shows up at meetings, is present and signals that the slogan will be retained. The budget is finally approved in full and the push for this comes from Priyanka Gandhi, who like her brother, is an on-again, off-again presence at meetings.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Credit: PTI/File Photo
Sundar’s team races through the next two months putting together posters, films, radio and TV spots and print media campaigns targeting the Congress’s base – farmers, unemployed youth, middle-class investors and women. Each ad carries the winner tagline – ‘Congress ka haath, Aam aadmi ke saath’.
Execution of the strategy
Sundar’s book shows that she and her team are constantly surprised. The Congress code words are alien to them. One of them is ‘10, Janpath’, another ‘is ‘them’. Who is “them,” she asks before it dawns on her that them is Sonia Gandhi’s children, Rahul and Priyanka. At their first meeting with the Gandhis, Sundar’s team gets ticked off by a crony for trying to place a laptop on Indira Gandhi’s priceless writing table.
The book has lovely nuggets on Sonia. She understands India and its people more deeply than conveyed by her shy appearance and accented English. At one point in Sundar’s team’s presentation, Sonia corrects a visual depicting a Dalit home. A home that size would be a landowner’s; Sundar is instructed to change the picture. Sonia, who is central to the campaign, is not easy to capture on camera. She looks rigid, unsmiling. Finally, daughter Priyanka engages her in conversation that makes her smile. In the set of slides Sundar’s team quickly assembles, Sonia looks radiant.
The book talks of Sonia’s indefatigable energy; she’s out most days early morning to night holding rallies – which as subsequent analysis will show is clearly a major contributing factor in halting the Congress’ predicted decline.
For the reader, there are several curious things about the Congress’s 2004 campaign, starting with its selection of an ad agency that knows nothing about politics, even less about the Congress. This is amazing given the Congress’s reputation as a party wedded to cronyism.
Also read: ‘Out With the Gandhis’ a Cry of Despair; With No Obvious Replacement, Cure May Be Worse than Disease
Sundar affirms that though the Congress’s lack of speed was perplexing, especially in view of the rival BJP’s high-energy sledgehammer approach, the team she dealt with – Salman Khurshid, Jairam Ramesh, Motilal Vora in the main – is thoroughly professional.
More unbelievably, Congress agrees to Sundar’s pre-condition that her agency be paid in advance and by cheque. Every single payment is accounted for. If there are bundles of cash stashed away somewhere, as one would expect of any party in election time, more so the Congress thought to be mired in black wealth, this is not where it is deployed
Can Congress revive itself?
This brings us to the title of the book: ‘Don’t forget 2004′. The Congress party averted a near-certain defeat in 2004, but did it really register a thumping win? Secondly, and more importantly, can it repeat 2004 in 2024 with Narendra Modi and Amit Shah steamrolling every opposition in sight? It doesn’t help the party that its own leadership is without a clear strategy and is plagued by dissidence.
Re-reading the title, ‘Don’t forget 2004,’ one thought comes to mind. In 2004, Sonia Gandhi was all the Congress had, a blessing in retrospect, considering the disastrous later track record of her children. Rahul Gandhi has proved to be all bluster, a mere Twitter mogul incapable of staying the course. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s debut as a leader in Uttar Pradesh saw the Congress vote share crash to a mere 2%.
Is a repeat of 2004 even possible for Congress? Yes on one condition: Remove Modi, Shah and the Gandhi siblings from the political scene, and the Congress might be able to bounce back. The Congress is as handicapped by Modi-Shah’s colossal presence in governance and politics as it is by the brother-sister pair’s inertia. Forget reversing the Congress’s decline, they manage to lose well preserved Congress bastions, a situation made worse by internal dissidence and defections to the BJP.
File images of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah. Photo: Reuters.
Sundar presents 2004 as a stupendous victory for the Congress which it was not. In a December 2004 essay for the Economic and Political Weekly, ‘The elusive mandate of 2004,’ Yogendra Yadav then with the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), argued that the 2004 verdict was not a decisive mandate for the UPA (The United Progressive Alliance consisting of the Congress and its allies)
To quote Yadav: “The final all-India seats and vote share for the major parties show how difficult it is to claim that the Congress and its allies had secured a mandate to rule. While the Congress improved its tally to 145, an improvement of 31 seats over its worst-ever performance in the 1999 elections, its vote share actually fell by 1.9 percentage points between the two elections.”
Also read: Congress’s Chintan Shivir Was a Step in the Right Direction
Taking only the seats the Congress contested, it registered a marginal improvement of 1.3 per centage points –from 33.3% in 1999 to 34.6% in 2004.
Yadav said: “If the UPA managed to overtake the NDA in popular vote share, it is largely because its allies brought it fresh support. That is why much of the focus of political commentators on the reasons for the rise of popularity of the Congress was misplaced; they were seeking to explain something that had not happened.”
What did happen was a “real decline” in the popular vote share of the NDA. In the 1999 Lok Sabha election, the NDA which went on to form a government secured a vote share of 40.8%. That declined to 35.9% in 2004, a fall of nearly five percentage points. The BJP on its own dropped 44 seats to finish at 138 compared to 182 in 1999.
This is where Sundar can probably claim some, not all, credit. Sundar and her team correctly assessed that India Shining was going to be a liability for the Vajpayee-led NDA. They came up with an intelligent counter in ‘Aam aadmi ko kya mila?’ and convinced the Congress to run it in conjunction with ‘Congress ka haath aam aadmi ke saath’.
But a slogan alone could not have sufficed to lift the Congress, even if only minimally, from the morass it was in. The message the slogan carried needed to be propagated and this task was done by Sonia Gandhi more effectively than anyone could have believed at the time – from putting together an alliance to holding rallies and mass contact programmes, she was far and away the best thing the Congress had in its repository.
It is in 2009 that the Congress-led UPA really made its mark, winning a second successive victory under prime minister Manmohan Singh whose stewardship of the economy won him international acclaim. This blended splendidly with the government’s pro-poor policies and its rights-based legislations.
In contrast, the BJP was in the doldrums, sulking and badly behaved after two consecutive defeats in 2004 and 2009. By 2010, the BJP had become the enfant terrible of Indian politics. Inside the party there was a civil war raging and even supporters were fast giving up on it.
In a 2010 essay written for Seminar magazine, the pro-BJP commentator Swapan Dasgupta called it a “dying party.” He also said a former Cabinet minister was overheard in the Central Hall of Parliament questioning the wisdom of persisting with a dying party.
But all that had changed by 2013. A lot of it owed to the Congress’s trouble with its allies and the mounting corruption charges against it. But one factor more than all others destroyed the Congress, rendering it weak and vulnerable. The factor was Narendra Modi, assisted by his Machiavellian Man Friday, Amit Shah. The two men watched as Delhi’s streets were roiled by protests. Many of the charges were unproven but an image had taken hold in the public mind that the Congress was a corrupt party with a history of greed and avarice and now headed by a foreign woman.
The rest is of course history. To return to the question, can Congress repeat 2004? Not by a long shot. Dissidence and poor electoral performance aside, it is today like a headless chicken. It has no base to draw its voters from the matriarch who continues to be the Congress’s best bet, and she is unwell. Her reluctant heir will neither lead nor allow anyone else to lead. The Congress party needs a new, dynamic leadership but where is that?
Vidya Subrahmaniam is a senior journalist, formerly with The Hindu and The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy.