How to Win an Indian Election: What Political Parties Don’t Want You to Know

by Shivam Shankar Singh

a man that many believed would transform the system had ended up becoming a part of it. He learnt to exploit it more than those who came before him and had learnt to influence the voters with caustic propaganda spread through conventional and social media. The system had won.

The requirement of money in politics and the requirement of political patronage for business have ensured a nexus between politicians and business houses.

Indian electorate is far from understanding the harm that data aggregation can do, and how conventional and social media combined with data is influencing their thinking in exactly the way that the powerful want.

By making the media a component of the nexus, the nation’s politicians and businessmen have ensured that there is no one to report the wrongdoings and the illicit deals.

plutonomies were defined as economies ‘where economic growth is powered by and largely consumed by the wealthy few’.

The simplest way to keep the people from railing against the system was to redirect their anger towards other enemies, such as anti-nationals, urban Naxals, Pakistan, Muslims, Congress leaders past and present, and so on.

It was disheartening to realize that people who had dedicated their lives to serving others did not even get votes from the people whom they had directly helped.

Over the decades, several individuals with remarkable passion have hoped to disrupt how politics is done in India. They have tried to win elections without the use of money and muscle power, without appealing to people’s castes and religions, and without compromising the ideals of their movement. In most cases, they have failed

how news had become propaganda, how absolute ‘non-issues’ became the topmost issues for several days and how the same people who were ministers in the Congress government had now joined the BJP, ensuring that nothing in the state would change even if a new party were elected.

politics is a domain that the educated have left wide open.

anyone who wants to do anything positive in politics has to be willing to stick with it for a long time without expecting results.

The only way forward seems to be to persist and help others with good intentions. It is only when the number of people who want widespread systemic change builds to a critical mass that positive change will happen.