Technology: Modi's masterstroke that won him absolute majority

Was the desire for change the only reason for Narendra Modi’s gigantic victory, or did technology play a powerful enabling role that ensured that the desire for change for harnessed and amplified? Modi’s massive win, the most resounding election victory India has seen in 30 years, already been qualified as a case study for B-school students where they will study how to use the rules of management and marketing to lead and win based on the lessons learnt from Modi’s campaign.

There’s no denying the fact that Indian elections have never seen the use of technology on such a massive scale as witnessed during General Elections 2014. The tech-savvy Modi’s campaign had a perfect blend of technology, along with rousing rhetoric. The BJP left no stone unturned to make Modi’s campaign truly high-tech with generous servings of social media, Big Data & analytics, and innovative apps all part of the menu.

The tech-savvy campaign enabled Modi to engage with voters directly through social media. Since the only aim of the campaign was to reach out to more and more voters and younger people, especially with 100 million first time voters, the party used the services of a couple of tech start-ups. Almost all parties leveraged social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, to get closer to their voters; but the Modi brigade went many steps ahead. The partnership with tech start-up ‘Voxta’ brought BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi closer to non-techie voters. Voxta’s speech-recognition powered, interactive, national phone line allowed voters to hear Modi talking about the BJP’s policy on specific issues.

One of the most talked about trend witnessed recently was is that of selfies. Many celebrity selfies have been the subject of worldwide attention, and Modi made sure not to miss out on this trend either. His campaign selfies as well as a selfie after voting in Ahmedabad went viral and was there for all tech-savvy young voters to see, which led to an instant connection with youth.

Modi also takes Twitter seriously and has been active on the micro-blogging platform for a couple of years with over 4.11 million followers. On the contrary, his competitor Congress leader Rahul Gandhi avoided Twitter for reasons best known to him. Moreover, the Indian National Congress as a party took to Twitter only this year.

Then there was the use of 3D hologram technology in Modi’s campaign. 3D Hologram rallies allowed Modi to appear live, in 3D, at approximately 100 locations simultaneously and the BJP thus reached millions of voters throughout the country.