Game Of Votes

Description

Taking the reader on a roller coaster ride, the game of votes showcases the full spectrum of the key actors and stars of the electoral arena, the rise and fall of political parties, the role of the digital and technology platforms, and the emergence of fake news impacting election outcome in India and across the world. The book is a veritable prime on Indian politics, as it runs through the entire history of Indian polity and provides insights into how political parties gradually shifted from campaigning on their own to hiring top-notch advertising agencies. It tells the story of how Modi won the election in 2014 and repeated an exceptional performance in 2019. It also gives a bird’s eye view of how Barack Obama and Donald Trump ran their election campaigns and how to understand critical developments in political communication. The book provides glimpses of international politics in the US and Europe and covers important developments in Egypt and South East Asia, drawing comparisons between the Western world with the fast-changing developments in India. This book brings the readers face-to-face with the changing dynamics of election campaign and democracy. This is the inside story behind the game of votes in India. Excerpt: “The two important facets of election campaigns are image building and the use of rhetoric. Every political party tries to project a strong and progressive image of itself and debilitate the image of the opposing party simultaneously. Amid the game of positioning and destroying the image of each other during the electoral campaigning, the political parties however attempt to manoeuvre the voters. They deliberately confuse, misguided and misinform the people, instead of sharing objective facts with them. The campaigns are usually based on exaggerated and prolonged discussions on the size of one’s chest, dietary habits, origin, descent, marital status, in-laws, extended families and the number of foreign trips which the candidate has undertaken. Heightened and artificial threat perception is also created to strike the fear of possible mob psychology and instil more doubt instead of owning the ‘other’ communities. The use of stand-up comics, poets, filmmakers, actors and stars has only gone on to create a credible and believable narrative.”