Election strategy for a candidate contesting for lower house of parliament.

Abstract

Democracy has been in action in India for the past six decades. The largest democracy in the world has witnessed 15 general elections since the formation of the Indian Republic. The voting age was lowered from 21 to 18 by the Constitution (Sixty-first Amendment) Act 1988. The number of voters for 2009 general election was 700 millioni an increase of about 25 million over 2004 figuresii . Unlike a voter in UK or US, who has maximum two to three options to choose from, in India options available to a voter is plenty. There are 6 national parties and over 35 state parties apart from over 100 registered unrecognized partiesiii and moreover due to the low fees to be filled the number of independents standing for elections have also increase multi-fold. In 1952 there were 3.8 candidates per constituency and it tripled to 11.2 by 1989iv. If this increase is any indication to go by then we can safely assume that this figure would have increased to 13-14 by 2009 elections. This also means that it is easy for a voter to get confused when exposed to lot of propaganda from various candidates. It is in this light that it becomes important for a candidate to develop a robust election strategy to reach-out to his electorate and communicate the message properly. An election manifesto encompasses every realm of development that is important for a society. Each constituency is a house for millions of individuals with different social realities and priorities. Developing an all encompassing strategy that takes care of the chief priorities of majority of the electorate is more than just a balancing act. It has to be, more importantly, rooted in the ground realities and should be based on a thorough understanding of the social fabric. A candidate unless he has a proper vision and strategy in place will fail to do justice to the position once he gets elected. It will also result in the constituency losing the opportunity to gain maximum out of the elected representative. Thus we believe that for the democracy to succeed the elected representative should have a clearly charted out action plan not just for winning the election but also for the post election days. From this point of view, we believe that developing a winning election strategy is much more than a social balancing act and hence this work.