The vote gatherers

Hiralal Darda, 46, and YA Kittur, 49, are members of a Bhandup-based NGO, People’s Power of Nation. Unlike typical NGOs, however, they are not into run-of-the-mill welfare work, such as working for children, or collecting funds for underprivileged communities. They are concerned with ‘welfare’ of another sort: massaging people for their votes.

“Whichever party pays me must get every vote I promise, and I have to achieve this by any means,” says Darda, as he explains the ‘services’ he provides to political parties before elections. The game, reveals Darda, is all about how you spend crores of rupees before and during the election campaign and yet on paper show only the government-approved figure of Rs36 lakh.

“We have worked both within the law and outside. Two years ago, we felt the need for an umbrella to provide our services legitimately. So, here we are, two proud NGO members,” smiles Darda.

The duo’s job starts almost three years before the elections. Their team carries out a demographic survey of an area and segregates voters on the basis of their sex, religion, caste, and creed and specifies the ‘requirements’ of the area. The candidate’s publicist then decides the wooing strategy for each category.

For certain caste and income groups, the campaign strategy is simple: booze. “Let’s not fool ourselves that the people from the lowest income groups care about your party’s tagline and slogans. Give them alcohol to last days, blankets, and throw a chicken biryani party, and their votes are assured,” explains Kittur, with the seriousness of a man who knows his business.

But throwing such a party also entails the risk of putting party workers in a spot if they are caught doling out goodies to voters. Precisely to deal with such an eventuality, political parties bring workers from other states (mostly from the north) to do the job. And the likes of Darda and Kittur ensure that these outstation visitors are kept properly ‘entertained’ so that they are willing to take the risk of being caught.

“It is an expensive affair, no doubt. But these party members have to be kept happy,” says Darda. “If any of them is caught red-handed, the party simply disowns him and takes care of his family back home.”

While the lower income voters are taken care of easily enough, the middle-class voters are more difficult to woo. “They are the trickiest. After all, you can’t just turn up at their homes with alcohol and a non-vegetarian feast,” laughs Darda. Here, he explains, enters the vote manager. A sort of an electoral Man Friday, the party picks a vote manager for every locality.

These vote managers work round the year to ensure maximum visibility for the political party. Equipped with large budgets, they help fund cultural and sports activities of the housing society mandals. So, the next time you see a lavish Diwali, dahi handi, Navratri or a cricket tournament planned by a housing society, you can guess where the big bucks came from, and, at the next election, to whom the votes will go.

Another game the duo is aware of — well enough to play it themselves — is putting up a ‘dummy candidate’. “Imagine a situation where the party feels that their candidate may not garner the maximum number of votes due to poor campaigning, inadequate public support, or a strong opposition. In such a situation, we plant dummy candidates to ensure that the opposition’s vote is divided,” explains Darda.

The dummy candidates are mostly projected to the voters as independent candidates. Their campaign programme is designed by the party that plants them, and in such a way that it is just about adequate to woo a sizeable number of voters but not good enough to win.   

Prakash Bhagat, 55, usually addressed as Monto, is one of the BJP’s vote managers. He prints the BJP’s banners and leaflets, besides the visiting cards of most party members. Monto works from a shanty near the office of Tara Singh, his party’s Lok Sabha candidate. One of his responsibilities is to ensure a good turnout at party rallies.

"The party appoints a few people under Monto solely to take care of the crowds at a rally. Show hamesha houseful hona chahiye (The show must be houseful at all times),” say Monto and Darda. Every one of these people then pays a few close aides Rs1000 each to arrange for at least five people per head. “Every man and woman in the crowd is either given their share of money or food for that day,” says Monto. If the party member or his aide tries to act smart, warns Monto, and refuses the money or food, these people know exactly what to do — approach the media and spill the beans, or launch an agitation against the party.

The women’s wing is also a critical arm of the political party’s electoral machinery. According to Kalpana Joshi, general secretary of the north-east women’s wing, BJP, women voters need a specific orientation to “choose the right person”. At a party meeting which this reporter attended, Joshi’s posse turned up in their finest, decked out in bright pink saris and gold jewellery, and spoke eloquently of their duties. “Women need to be made aware of their rights, they need also to know which political party can help them through it all,” she says matter-of-factly, while her group nods away. Her wing, she explains, conducts health seminars and helps women and their families understand and exercise their basic rights. 

Darda and Kittur, however, snigger at the mention of the women’s wing. “Women voters are best dealt with by their own kind. Excuse my language,” warns Darda, “par aurton ka dimaag unke ghutno mein hota hai (women’s brains are in their knees).” To support his thesis, he explains how all you need is one woman  to mobilise an entire locality for a fight.

“The women’s wing takes the female voters on all-expenses-paid trips to resorts, sometimes with children in tow,” says Darda. “Take them along for the door-to-door campaigning, and see them work their charm on the family,” he adds. 

But all this may still not be enough to ensure victory for his party. Which is why Darda also has what he refers to as his ‘trump card’. On April 16, he plans to publish a scandal against the opposition’s candidate, which he believes will have an impact on the voters.  “We know exactly what he has been up to in the last few years,” he says.

"Years of research have gone into making this,” he informs you proudly. And he’s magnanimous enough to ask us, “Would you like to have it as an exclusive?”