Thursday, July 29, 2010

Blue Ocean Strategy for BJP


This article will be a confluence of two widely divergent ideas that is, management principles and Indian politics. It attempts to design a blue ocean strategy for BJP.
(Non Indian readers please note that BJP also known as the Bhartiya Janata Party is a national political party of India that believes in Hindutava)
(Blue ocean strategy is a strategic approach that tries to capture non customers for a firm by providing them cost efficient value innovation)

Before carrying forward the analysis 1st we must understand the customers and non customers of BJP.
Customers:-
1> Any Hindu fundamentalist be it a hard core or a moderate.
2> Educated Urban class(Delhi is an exception)
3> Business class people and Brahmins(BJP is also sometimes known as Brahman Baniya party)
4> Others(that include people from various socio economic classes that cannot be categorized)

Non customers:-
1> A large amount of Indian population that is politically inactive,do not have any opinion of itself, and often rely on any crap that the media tells them(The author is of the opinion that Indian media is highly biased against the Hindutava forces of India and often portrays them in negative light( views are personal))
2> A large part of rural poor
3> people from scheduled caste and scheduled tribes(There is another tendency In Indian media of  portraying Hindutva as something anti-dalit )
4> Marxist (Both hardliners as well as moderates)
5> pseudo seculars(India has a good chunk of such people)
6> South Indians in general (baring Karnataka)
7> Muslims and Christians (Includes both hardliners as well as moderate)
8>Others (again those that cannot be categorized)

Now other than hardliners, from the red camp and from the religions of Islam and Christianity ,BJP has the potential of attracting all other class of non customers)

Presently, BJP is hugely spending its resources:-
1> Hindutava:-
a) Genuine issues:- such as terror attacks, safety concerns of people, respect of national symbols, Cow slaughter etc.
b)Not very genuine issues:- defending any crap that is related to Hinduism even that might be something like the caste system, defending a shankra charya who had been involved in murder case, or any other Hindu ritual that does not make much sense these days.
2> Opposing the incumbent central govt. for any action it takes.
3> Maintaining strong ties with other Hindutva factions such as Rss, Vishawa Hindu parishad, Ram sena,Shiv sena etc.
4>Projecting leaders like Narendra Modi & Varun gandhi as the new face of Hindutva.
5> Struggling hard to solve its internal differences.

Now the author attempts to do an ERRC analysis

(ERRC is eliminate, reduce,raise & create analysis where some of the existing parameters are reduced or eliminated where as some are raised and some new are created)

Eliminate:-
1> Anything that shows the irrational side of Hindutva should be scraped completely from the party agenda(Its good for party as well as Hinduism also)
2> Internal troubles of the party.
3> unwanted minority bashing

Reduce:-
1> Reduce, pestering the incumbent govt. for anything and every thing.It sends wrong signal to the media.
2> Reduce Strong ties with parties like Rss and ram sena(though this really does not mean that ties should be completel cut off, because provide essential force to the Hindutava movement but BJP must understand that general Hindu psyche dislikes very aggressive viewpoint)
3> Reduce activities that deals with symbolic side of Hinduism. Stuffs such as national song etc does not make much sense in the present scenario (Though the author finds them very important)

Raise:-
1> Raise activities that are focused more towards development rather than religion.

2> BJP govts (as well as allies)have done phenomenal jobs in states like Madhya Pradesh,BiharGujrat,Chattisgarh etc. BJP must try to promote strongly on these lines.

3> Karnataka:- Karnataka is the 1st South Indian state where, BJP had formed its government,so strategically it has great significance ,but unfortunately nothing substantial have been done by the govt over here. Since Karnataka can be the launching ground for spreading the influence in other south Indian states,  BJP needs to take extra care for carrying out strong development works over here.
4> Though hard-line Hindutava is dangerous but there are lot of important issues that needs to take care of, including terrorism, Kashmir crisis,conversions in the name of money etc. These issues should be raised seriously ,not only will it be good for the health of nation but will also help in garnering support of a large no. of people who in general are politically inactive but do fear such stuffs.
4> Promote Modi and Varun for their vision (also developmental activities in Modi's case),not for Hindutava

Create
1> Take initiatives for the development of the Scheduled and backward classes of India. Hindutava(moderate) cannot be a Viable idea until unless these people will remain marginalized.
2> Take strong action against illegal Immigration:- India especially its eastern and north eastern parts are infected heavily with illegal immigration. West Bengal itself has some one crore illegal immigrants(thanks to the local government).BJP must try to garner public support on such issues.

Though this alone is not sufficient and as a party BJP needs to take a lot of other steps but these steps if taken properly can surely convert a lot of non customers into customers.

(Views here are personal and attempt to see certain things with a very objective approach, the blog does not intend to hurt any one)

13 comments:

  1. AMIT KUMAR SINDHUPEJuly 29, 2010 at 1:21 PM

    Gud 1 ...
    although I difer a bit with some of ur personal opinions((:), the management metrics have been used in a splendid way in the realm of politics, u know it becomes very easy for a naive like me to understand glithces of certain economic terms through your posts...I just love the simplicity you portray...u rock paritosh...

    Looking forward to see more

    Regards
    Amit Kumar Sindhupe

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  2. Thanks Amit for the compliments...btw this is not a personal opinion tried my level best to make it an objective analysis

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  3. BJP is the strongest party on paper but is floundering. The party should first do away with all the contention, suspicion and strife within the Parivar. The obvious task for it is to reinvent itself and redefine the contours of its ideology to address the concerns of the new-age electorate.

    The ERRC thing: Very nicely put! [We had a class on ERRC just a couple of days back.]

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  4. hi pritosh read your blog. Good attempt. Indded BJP needs to think out of box. Just clamouring , shouting and TV studio debates is not going to help much. Following is my opinion.
    (1) Trials (STs) are not non customers for BJP. In fact ST section is a strong hold of BJP. Br Jharkhand, MP, Chhatishgarh. Thier impressive performance in all states MP, CG, Himchal or any where is because of the strong vote bank of Tribals. Erlier STs were strong hold of Congress. But Work by Vanvashi kalyan ashrams, Srasawati shihu madir and Vishwa Hindu Parisad, brought the Tribals more closer to the Hindutva ideology. BJP just leveraged on that.
    (2) BJP has to accept a fact that "muslims (majority) and Seudo secular will never vote for BJP in near foreseeable future. So no point in wooing them.
    (3) RSS, VHP, Shiv sena, Ram Sena are all very different organizations. They are as different as father, brother , irritating neighborhoods and fools-living-in-same locaity. As far as i Know, BJP never supported Ram Sena. On many issues they mutely opposed many shiv sena views. But severing ties with RSS will be suicidal for BJP. RSS doent need BJP. But BJP needs the vast network of RSS "volunteers" (swyamsevaks). Its the 50 years of consistent hard work this network of volunteers, which made BJP gain ultimate power in 1999 and 2001. BJP lost in 2004 not because of its "Shinning India" campaign back fired, but because the RSS volunteers dint worked for BJP. because they feel left and cheated during the 5 year of BJP rule. Which leader succeeded in gaining power or losing power depends upon the support he/she gets from the RSS network. Madan lal Khurana/Klayan Singh/Vasundhra Raje they all ignored RSS during their power years and lost the subsequent elections. On other hand, Sivraj Singh Chauhan/Narendra Modi/Raman Singh/ Uttrakhand/Himachal leaders they all won successive elections, because they were always in good books of RSS. The electronic and print Media which is full of secularist may potray just opposite but truth is there is very large section which has latent support for Hindutva ideology. That is the reason BJP became from a small time party (just 2 MPs in 1984 elections) to largest national party (180 MPs). You msut be knowing that once upon a time till 1995-96 BJP was known as a Prty with a difference because of its ethics, value, discipline and modern nationalist view. This was because of its strong ties with RSS. As most volunteers and leaders came from RSS background. But in search of greater acceptability is short time, they moved away from RSS and result is they didn't get any got new vote bank but lost some traditional votes and result was stagnation nd then decline.
    (2) Every organizational has mission, vision and goals. BJP was formed as political wing of RSS. Its responsibility was to gather the political power to spread the ideology of RSS. It should stick to that.

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  7. duplicate posts have been deleted.

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  8. Nice Read. Thanks.

    BOC for the BJP makes Sense.

    The Party seriously needs some introspection.
    In my opinion -- I am not into much management stuff-- the biggest gains in such an approach BOC would be i guess in increasing the market size or consumption class-- in this case the VOTER Base.

    The Indian demographics in India prevent implementing a Sea Change in Citizen Mindsets. So , as one of the measures suggested by you say-- we need to mobilize the non-voters to vote.

    But again the demographics in India-- we should have majority of these new-voters being the coming of age youth.

    But it is here -- it becomes tough for the BJP.
    A typical case in point -- the youth gets skewed in their opinion ( the youth that would surely vote) are more swayed by their right to FREEDOM-- which they consider as their COOLNESS quotient and hence a predominantly HINDU party does not appeal to them-- And any measure to even push them to adopt this HINDU Mindset in its current form meets with utter disdain -- not an ideal LOVE STORY ;).

    On the other hand -- We have RAHUL GANDHI -- who commands this cool QUOTIENT with the YOUTH and with no option-- who wants to board a sinking ship-- the legitimate voters board the INC Bandwagon.

    More so, a BLACK SWAN like a WAR -- which would peg INDIA back by half a decade or so , looks like a perfect background for the BJP to seize power once again.

    Cheers!
    J..

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