Rajasthan polls behind him, strategist for Cong, Gehlot lays out his role: ‘Not about telling anyone how to contest’

He believes he has done his job well, with the Congress going toe to toe with the BJP for the course of the polls, and Gehlot coming out as a leader in his own right as the BJP fell back on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Speaking to The Indian Express at his Jaipur office, after the campaign wrapped up for the state, Arora said he was confident that the Congress was going to form the government “under the leadership of Mr Ashok Gehlot”, repeating the party’s mission of 156 seats.

His confidence stemmed from the nine months of work on the ground, Arora said. “We had real time feedback, ran multiple campaigns, each one building a bigger momentum,” he said, adding that the Congress “controlled the narrative, with the other parties either responding or copying”.

According to Arora, this Rajasthan election is “different” from polls in the past four decades. “People are voting not for A or B candidates but a party in which they find resonance ofthe welfare schemes that they have benefited from,” he said.

The poll strategist said his job mainly was to ensure that the people realised the benefits of these schemes, giving the example of the Mehengai Rahat camps that the Gehlot government started seven months ago, where people could come in and enroll for the 10 big schemes of the government. “The guarantees continued in the Congress (poll) promises, because a vote is always for the future… So what are you promising new?”

With poll strategists now part of the electoral space across parties, Arora said there is a misconception about the word ‘campaign’. “People generally associate campaign with publicity, but that’s just a part of it. Campaign means an end-to-end solution in which you research, then based on the research, you strategise, propose the strategy to the leadership, and once the leadership is in concurrence, you plan the execution.”

Distancing himself from any talk of a ‘Brand Gehlot’, Arora said: “He is a politician, doing politics since before I was born. He has seen everything. I cannot teach someone how to contest elections. Our role always is how to value add. Because the times have changed, the methods of communication have changed, the rules of electioneering, the ground rules are changing.”

However, he added, a government runs in the name of the CM, “and it is a good thing… people of any state need to know who is going to lead them… And if the recall value of a CM is as much as Mr Gehlot, then why not?”

On the comparison between working with Gehlot, 72, and Shivakumar, 60, he said the first difference was language as he doesn’t know Kannada. “Then, Mr Shivakumar is a quick decision-maker, he’ll not take a week or, depending on the situation, a month or so. But Mr Gehlot thinks through a lot. He will take a lot of advice, consult his confidants… With Mr Shivakumar, it’s instinctive.”

Arora added: “Another thing is that Mr Gehlot believes in keeping the conventional modes of communication alive, whereas Mr Shivakumar doesn’t hesitate to shut off the old modes, whether communication or electioneering.”

Arora also commended Gehlot for his “openness”. “He is not a person who walks into a meeting and tells that this is how I thought and this is how you need to go. He will allow everyone to have a word, even if there are many people… (but) at the end of the day, he is the leader and he has to decide… Sometimes, even when he was half convinced, he trusted me.”

But would the Sachin Pilot camp agree with this view? Arora said that from what he has seen, both Pilot and Gehlot had one goal, for the Congress to win. “Mr Gehlot has a very cordial view about Mr Pilot, that he is a very important leader for the Congress, not just in Rajasthan, but nationally, and rightly so… I have not seen any kind of differences which would make me think that they are working in different directions.”

Arora, who has only worked with the Congress or its leaders, said that on the BJP campaign, he felt that while at the Centre a presidential kind of electioneering works now, it is not working for the BJP in states. “States want to elect their own person, or one of their own; although in some cases, their central leadership has been able to pull off some victories… Rajasthan itself has had two people as CM for the last 25 years. So people recognise only these two: Mr Gehlot and Vasundhara (Raje) ji.”

However, Arora does not think that projecting Raje as CM would have worked for the BJP. “On the ground, the comparison between Mr Gehlot and the former CM, if it was made an election point, the BJP would have been on a bigger back foot.”

But, within the Congress too, there was some opposition to Arora, with reports coming of differences with party state president Govind Singh Dotasra. Before the polls, some Congress leaders wanted Arora to promote the party more than the government, while some officials of the government’s publicity department were also unhappy at the importance given to Arora’s firm.

Arora dismissed talk of his differences with Dotasra as “a figment of imagination”, saying the Congress leader too had clarified this.

The veteran of “10 elections over eight years” claimed he had had his fill. “I do this work out of passion. I have other interests as well, and wanted to do something else after Karnataka. But it so happened that this Rajasthan thing came up, and it was a challenge, probably the biggest challenge around, and I enjoy challenges… But just (helping) contest an election, it is not anymore on my agenda. It has to have that challenge and freedom for me to participate in.”

With he and his team of 2,500 persons working non-stop for the last month-and-a-half, the first thing on his mind was sleep, Arora added. “This is our 10th election, it takes a toll on you, it takes a toll on your personal life, health, mind-space.”

Could the next step be politics, like in the case of Prashant Kishor, who paved the way for political strategists in India? Arora asserted no. “I have been offered the best of things in the last seven years. I enjoy doing a lot of other things which politicians probably can’t do. So, I would rather go and make movies, than join politics. But yes, I am interested in policy making and policy communication. I feel governments do make good policies, across party lines, but those don’t actually get to the people.”