JUST SPAMMING | Yanking The War Room Doors Open
As election season approaches, we hear, read and discuss strange things. One thing we’ve heard over and over again in recent elections is what they call a ‘war room’, which adds a mysterious air to the word. It is seen as a place where strategies for fighting elections are developed not exactly by politicians or foot soldiers of political parties, but by strategists. Perhaps because the word ‘strategy’ is based on war and warmongering, the term ‘war room’ has been etymologically coined to denote room, simply a table, or a temporary meeting where ‘experts’ sketch out plans to confront the election, a democratic practice.
The mystique of the war room has deepened over the last few elections, as these ‘experts’ differ from the traditional political foot soldiers who become active during elections and sweat in the open by meeting people in person to garner votes for party candidates, pasting posters or drawing symbols on walls (done even today in rural areas), accompanying campaigners, holding party flags and banners aloft, and planning and executing a host of other activities aimed at garnering votes. Since this event marked the entry of ‘white collar’ workers into politics, almost every party felt the need to set up their own IT Wings, which were war rooms.
Now, Aspire K Swaminathan, who conceptualized and founded the first IT wing of a political party in India, incidentally in Tamil Nadu, has published a book titled ‘Inside the War Room – How to build, fight and win power’, perhaps to unveil the aura surrounding war rooms. The book provides a perspective on elections through lived experiences rather than political theory and electoral battles. Although Swaminathan is no longer associated with the party whose IT wing he founded, he wrote the book based on his experiences in traditional grassroots mobilization, voter behavior analytics, structured narrative building, alliance engineering and integration of emerging technologies into political campaigns.
As he himself admits, he ‘aims to equip the next generation of political leaders and strategists with not only the dexterity for power but also the wisdom to wield it responsibly’ through the book, which consists of 51 chapters each presenting a specific high-pressure political situation drawn from ‘real-world dynamics that shape campaigns, governance, alliances, media narratives, intra-party tensions and leadership transitions’. He says the book should not be read passively, but should be experienced as it is structured as a strategic simulation.
Each chapter presents a political situation and raises a question that offers the reader multiple options. The author then makes his choice and explains why he chose it and lists the disadvantages of other options. Some situations may coincide with real-life developments witnessed in the run-up to the current elections. Even though the option the author chooses is not exactly in line with what the relevant political party does in real life, the theoretical explanation offered in the book contains a mine of political wisdom.
In its chapter titled ‘The Candidate of the Future’, the book addresses today’s conundrum regarding politics and politicians, concluding that a candidate cannot be completely machine and at the same time frozen in nostalgia as the answer to the question ‘what will the candidate of the future look like?’ So he’s talking about a hybrid leader who has mastered both the ancient art of human connection and the modern science of machine augmentation and becomes a bridge between humans and the platform, emitting both the warmth of touch and the cold glow of the screen. He also cites a case study of an aging leader and his heir and recommends choosing a ‘mentoring narrative’ because succession is inevitable and in controlling the succession narrative. ‘A leader who frames his heir as his own creation does not disappear; “It becomes immortal in the DNA of the party,” he says.
Offering specific advice on dealing with various situations, the book says that the real power of the strategist is not to silence betrayal, but to make betrayal insignificant. It is stated that when allies leak information, the leader must appear tall enough that the whispers do not affect him. On dealing with scandals, the book tells strategists that scandals are not decreasing, they are only growing, and recommends cutting ties with the accused quickly; This will send a strong signal that the party is bigger than the person. The scandal is not about the defendant, but about what the party stands for. He says the price to pay for defending the indefensible will be hard.
What should a strategist do if, just two weeks before the elections, a video emerges showing a party candidate arguing with a police officer at a checkpoint, making it appear that the candidate harassed and threatened the officer? Swaminathan says the narrative needs to be diverted by bringing up a new issue to shift the media’s focus. Instead of fighting a fire, another fire should be lit. The book, which gives tips on how to deal with scandals by turning the storm around, underlines how public relations stunts should feel realistic. He talks about the need to change the image of leaders who can appear harsh on television and gives the strategist the task of reshaping the perception without compromising originality. Because perception is a silent killer.
