Help create 'glorious' India: PM Modi to recruit volunteers from his online army

Most folks on WhatsApp would have received the link by now, a link to a form on the www.narendramodi.in website asking supporters for their suggestions for creating a new India and inquiring about core competencies of these supporters who may be roped in for future projects. The campaign for a Modi sarkaar may be over, but the juggernaut of mass support and volunteer-led mobilisation shows no signs of stopping as Team Modi prepares to capitalise on its gargantuan mass base of committed supporters for a new “grand movement” for nation-building. [caption id=“attachment_1536131” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Narendra Modi. PTI[/caption] The single page form tells people that they can help take the nation to greater heights and that the resources of people, especially the youth, will be immensely valuable to the new government. “Join this grand movement to create a strong, glorious and inclusive India. You are requested to fill this form,” it says. A report in The Economic Times says volunteers are likely to be recruited to help with field surveys, research and analysis, policy planning or ground execution, and will be the foundation of a new volunteer platform that Modi will build “after the highly successful Mission 272+”. Speaking to Business Standard, one of those who received the form says he is among 15,000 people who received thank you notes from the PM, thanking them for their contribution to his campaign on Twitter. These are volunteer Twitter-users who used their personal handles to send and retweet millions of posts to mobilise support for Modi. But the actual size of Modi’s cyber army is much larger: BJP’s cyber campaign managed to rope in about 10 million members; of these, 2.2 million became volunteers. “It was a 360-degree campaign that helped establish continuous commitment to and constant engagement with voters. The key to its success was the work done by a large number of volunteers. It was an online campaign for success offline,” says Arvind Gupta, chief of the BJP’s national information technology cell. This network of volunteers could now be used to effectively communicate Modi’s decisions and initiatives as PM. The ET report adds that the Citizens for Accountability and Governance, the NGO that handled some aspects of the Modi campaign, could continue to offer assistance to the new prime minister as a consultancy and could therefore use the services of talented volunteers. In addition, given that Modi is appearing to enjoy doing things in ways that Delhi is not familiar with, an unconservative approach of using volunteer experts and their talent could appeal to him, the report added.