Skip to main content

Outline of the Online Strategy Document for the Indian National Congress

Organizational Background 

The Indian National Congress (INC) also commonly called the Congress is one of the two major contemporary political parties in India, the other being the Bharatiya Janata Party. It is one of the largest and oldest democratically-operating political parties in the world. Founded by freedom fighter activists in 1885, it dominated politics nationally for most of the period from 1947–89. There have been seven Congress Prime Ministers, the first being Jawaharlal Nehru, serving from 1947–64 and the most recent being Manmohan Singh, serving from 2004-14. The party's social liberal platform is largely considered to be on the Centre-left of the Indian political spectrum.
In the last general elections in May 2014, the party suffered its worst defeat ever at the hands of the BJP. A major contributor to the defeat was the lackluster online campaign of the party as compared to a very energetic and robust online campaign run by the BJP, which saw extensive use of online media tools like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Going forward I personally believe that online campaign tools will hugely influence Indian elections and the Indian National Congress needs to have an online strategy it if wants to harness these changes to its advantage.

The POST Framework

We will develop the online strategy document based on the POST framework which is briefly described below as outlined by John Bernoff (co-author of The Groundswell) here. In short:
  • P is People. Don't start a social strategy until you know the capabilities of your audience.
  • O is Objectives. Pick one. Decide on your objective before you decide on a technology. Then figure out how you will measure it.
  • S is Strategy. Strategy here means figuring out what will be different after you're done. Imagine the endpoint and you'll know where to begin.
  • T is Technology. Once you know your people, objectives, and strategy, then you can decide with confidence.

The POST for Indian National Congress

People: The target audience for an online strategy for the Indian National Congress as largely two sets of people:
·      Firstly the students ranging from ages 16 to 24 from High School to Professional studies – they are highly skilled in social media and spend a considerable time online blogging, surfing and chatting
·      Secondly the working professionals ranging from ages 24 – 64 – they are also active on social media although a large part of their online presence is consumption of news and emails
·      Lastly homemakers and retired elders – They are occasionally online for largely entertainment purposes as well as for reaching out to relatives and friends through social media. Online skills limited to browsing, Skype and Facebook plus email in some cases

Objective: The main objective would be to establish outreach and open a direct two-way communication channel between party leaders and their constituents.

Strategy: I believe that as a result of this online strategy the party should be able to establish a direct two way communication channel between the voters plus workers if the party and their leaders such that it works as a medium of disseminating key information, messages as well as soliciting feedback.

Tool:  Based on the above parameters the online strategy document will evaluate different online tools like wikis, blogs, Facebook campaigns, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram etc. or a combination of these tools to achieve the objective stated above.

I am also highly influenced by the class reading this week on the Arab spring and the fact that online strategies also need to be in sync with offline strategies for ensuring success. Thus my online strategy will involve components of online training of party members who are net illiterate and will also incorporate elements of offline activities to further the “Objective” of increasing outreach between the party leaders and their constituents.

The effectiveness of the online campaign will e measured through Data analytic, the metrics of which will be defined in the online strategy document which will not only focus on the frequency but also the quality of the engagement that the strategy will facilitate.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Dystopia that is Uttar Pradesh

 How willful ignorance and distortion of facts is endangering millions in rural Uttar Pradesh Babloo Yadav’s brother-in-law died a few days ago. When the author inquired about the cause, the pained reply was, “Pata nahin bhaiya, bukhar tha”. Doctor kuch bata nahin paye,” roughly translates to, “We don’t know, he had a fever, the doctors could not diagnose.” This is a pattern that is repeating in millions of homes across rural Uttar Pradesh where people are supposedly dying of fever, typhoid, pneumonia, or whatever else they choose to assume in the absence of testing and clear diagnosis.  A state of dystopia is characterized by unimaginable suffering, totalitarianism, willful ignorance of the rulers towards the misery of their subjects, and distortion of facts to hide reality. Now let us examine whether Uttar Pradesh meets these dystopian parameters. Unimaginable Suffering The images of bodies floating in rivers in Uttar Pradesh across multiple districts, cremation grounds runn...
Post a Comment
Read more

The human tragedy that is the National Register of Citizens (India)

In most countries across the world, a residence record spanning nearly 50 years, a record of service to the society in various capacities such as being a veteran, regular tax filing for decades, law-abiding behaviour etc. should be more than enough to prove citizenship, NOT in India though. A career soldier , a serving doctor , a mother who is deemed an Indian citizen but her daughters are not , a brother whose real brother is a citizen but he is an illegal immigrant , a sitting member of Legislative Assembly  in Assam excluded and even an ex President's family being omitted are some of the stories emanating from the unending human tragedy that is the National Register of Citizens (NRC) process in Assam. Authorities in the northeastern state of Assam have published a citizenship list that aims to identify genuine citizens and seeks to exclude "Bangladeshi immigrants". "Bangladeshi immigrants" are defined as all those who are unable to provide documentary ...
1 comment
Read more

The Case For Printing More Money & Distributing It!

What I will argue for in this article is quite unorthodox and contrary to the conventional economic arguments that we are used to. I propose that in order to tide over the COVID 19 crisis and kick start the economy; the government should consider printing money and transferring the equivalent amount directly into the thirty crore Jan Dhan accounts. This will work to seamlessly ensure that the money reaches the masses while acting as a stimulant to revive demand. In economic terms, we call it monetizing the fiscal deficit that is a red herring in traditional economic logic, as most economists would rightly argue against printing money to finance deficits, citing inflation as a major concern.  The reason is that printing more money doesn’t increase economic output – it only increases the amount of cash circulating in the economy. If more money is printed, consumers are able to demand more goods, but if firms have still the same amount of goods, they will respond by putting up p...
1 comment
Read more