Kejriwal :Salesman of the year 2013 Part-2
After accepting the ruling class challenge upfront,Arvind and his team had a mammoth task in front of them,they had to start from scratch,no political experience, no backing but only the will to cleanse the muck filled politics.Here on he started as a ‘Salesman’.
First he started to identify the demand in the market or in this case how the people want their leader to look like.Honest,No Nonsense, Hardworking leaders was the need of the hour.Arvind started assembling his team keeping this in mind, he gave preference to merit of the person over his/her background.That way he was successful in differentiating his party with others in the fray.
Secondly ,he tried identifying the daily problems faced by people.Problems like fast running electricity meters,water shortage,overcharging by electricity companies etc were the issues faced by one and all but strangely no other political party mentioned them in their manifesto.Here, Team Arvind conducted door-to-door surveys and scored some crucial brownie points by promising to solve these, once they come in power.Slowly and slowly people started to believe Arvind as a ‘Silver bullet’ which will solve all their problems.Most Importantly, he started gaining public trust.
Like every successful product present in market ,Team Arvind needed a symbol,a tag which clicks with people,which reflects their personality.Like a wise ‘Salesman’, they choose a mop or a ‘jhadoo’ as their party sign.Credit must be given to them for this,after all what’s more common that a jhadoo ,which is found in every Indian household irrespective of rich or poor.And it reflected their ideology utmost-to clear the deep-rooted malaise present in politics.
From the beginning itself, Team Arvind was fighting for the well being of Aam aadmi and when it came to choosing a party name(rather a brand name)they named it aptly -Aam Aadmi Party or ‘AAP’ which symbolizes the importance of you as person,importance of people who vote for it.
In this way Arvind created the brand of ‘AAP’, a team of Aam Aadmis, who have come forward to cleanse the system of all the dirt,all the muck and provide a noteworthy governance.
The Idea clicked, and see how it clicked,on 8th Dec results were declared of assembly elections held in four states:Delhi, Rajasthan ,chattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.Although, owing to the anti- corruption sentiment, congress lost in all states by heavy margins but one name was the cynosure of all eyes -AAP. AAP won 28 out of 70 seats in Delhi, trailing BJP by mere 4 seats but for new comer to win even 1 seat is considered an achievement and AAP won 28.It was clearly more than an achievement and the manner in which AAP did made it more convincingly otherwise how would one explain Arvind Kejriwal,with no political background whatsoever, defeating a sitting chief minister of 15 years by a margin of more than 20000 votes.