07/02/2012

Lazy marketing, development & elections in India

Hi all

Writing a blog after a long time. Wish you all are happy, because that's the "thing" which everyone is after, but a few seem to get it. Its very simple to get it, that's why maybe majority cannot believe that a simple smile by a budding rose or first mispronunciation by a child can bring happiness.

Today the topic is projection of India's political parties' manifestos, parties' myopic visions and laziness of their marketing teams.

For discussions sake, lets pick 1991-92 as start year, when V.P. Singh was the Prime Minister and brought the affirmative action ( Mandal commission's recommendation) and offered quotas for economically backward classes, which across India, mostly was concurrent with backward "castes".

Mandal commission was a packaged product, which was embedded well within the Constitution of India, but never noticed. So V.P. Singh using his skills marketed this product well.

But thereon every other party used the same product ( became lazy ) as focus for marketing. Some ( like Congress) tweaked the same product  & sold, some like ( BJP) campaigned against the product to form an "anti-solution " or alternative ( as is known in strategy and recent example is Android software against Apple's software). But the function of both solution and anti-solution was thee same, to rally fragmented classes with similar views around each party's strategy  if any that existed). The laziness began to be self evident with lack of i) Marketing head ii) any marketing strategy.        
  
Now what congress is doing in Uttar Pradesh ( India's largest state in terms of no. of electorates ) is offering a more twisted version of the same Mandal mixed with Kamandal ( a pout used for religious purposes , but herein referred in context of India's religion based politics started by RSS and now led by RSS's political wing, BJP )

But lets also see another product brought in by India's largest opposition party , BJP. As always have been possible since 1000 A.D.  Indians can be divided, exploited, misguided to kill, discriminated against and fooled by religious jingoism. BJP picked up on "perceived " religious divide in Indian society and fooled whole of India for 10 long years in name of  Ram, the god. They marketed the same ( divisive ) product sold by V.P. Singh but with a new logo, marketing communications materials ( even Gods were not spared and they were forced to model for BJP ) and packaging ( religion; instead of V.P.'s caste and class).

After establishing Mandal and Kamandal as products like KFC and Mc Donald's ( which provide similarly unhealthy foods ) parties after parties devoid of any innovative ideation being to  twist and tweak the products offered. Mayawati picked up further on V.P.'s agenda of backward and started to market Dalit- centred products; announcing packages and throwing shoes at Mahatama Gandhi's symbols. A very clever move using the anger and frustration of the most underprivileged class and caste.

Coming back to Congress recent marketing tool. Mandal mixed with Kamandal; Caste based appeal intertwined with Religion. The Chief Marketing Officer, Salman Khurshid using his religion offered a quota within quota for ever decreasing government jobs. 4.5% of seats offered to Muslims within Other Backward Classes quota.

So we come here full circle for these two main parties' marketing startegy. Congress now using religion as BJP used "hindutva" sentiments. { just to inform : the word "hindutva never existed in the hindu lexcicon before RSS coined it...master stroke..like creation of words pepsi from an acid in stomach pepsinogen )                      

Meanwhile other non innovative parties like Lalu's, Mulayam's ,TDP, DMK etc marketed their own divisive products , just changing the packaging from acste to religion to region to economy.

But heres the breaking news, Indian population evolved over a period of time and started to punish these parties. These parties still didnot get their ears to the ground. Not listening to customers ( Indian voters) and having no marketing officer is spiraling all these parties to another vortex, where they are sinking further in their values, vision and products. Unable to notice as the sinking is relative they still think they can make fools out of the voters  ! But can they ? Still to be seen will be the intelligence of Indian voters, until then  we should keep our fingers crossed and expect "Rapid Sustainable Development " as the new marketing mantra.

Did anyone noticed they were able to sell because the customers happily lapped up , whatever these parties had to offer. This just doesnot apply to India but also to Europe and current US pre-election campaigns.

{ Please desist from making divisive comments as Politicians have been mandated to do that }


cheers & love !      


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