Campaigning and party strategies in Assam

ABSTRACT

Political campaigning in Assam and the Northeast region is distinctive in India’s hybrid media system. This study discusses parties and political campaigning in Assam’s hybrid media environment in the 2019 Lok Sabha and 2021 Legislative Assembly elections. The history of the state, party system development, and the media landscape precedes a discussion of the 2019 campaign drawing on interviews with party strategiests and television journalists. Although Facebook, Twitter and Instagram were on the rise as important campaign tools in Assam and the Northeast region in 2019, traditional political advertising (posters, pamphlets), coverage of political issues in traditional media (print and television news), as well as face-to-face communication (public meetings, door-to-door canvassing and rallies) remained the most important sources of political communication between voters and parties due to substantially lower teledensity than the national average. We explore how political parties used a mix of ‘advanced’ and ‘traditional’ campaigning tools to mobilize voters to support party agendas during the 2019 Lok Sabha election and the 2021 Legislative Assembly election campaign.

KEYWORDS:

• Assam
• door-to-door canvassing
• face-to-face communication
• traditional and social media
• Lok Sabha election 2019
• Legislative Assembly election 2021
• NORTHEAST INDIA
• political campaigning
• party agendas

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Banerjee, Why India Votes?, 43.

2. Ibid.

3. Willnat and Aw, Political Communication in Asia, 192.

4. Palshikar et al. (ed.), Electoral Politics in India.

5. Ibid.

6. Prabhu, Middle Class, Media and Modi.

7. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), ‘Annual Report.’ https://main.trai.gov.in/about-us/annual-reports.

8. The TRAI defines teledensity as the number of subscribers per hundred persons of the population. It is used as an important indicator to examine the state of penetration of telecom services in urban and rural areas in India. https://main.trai.gov.in/sites/default/files/A_TwentyYearOdyssey1997_2017.pdf.

9. https://main.trai.gov.in/sites/default/files/PIR08012019.pdf.

10. Ibid.

11. Dinesh and Ananth, “How the Mobile Phone Is Shaping To Be BJP’s Most Important Weapon In Elections.”

12. Mackenzie, The North-east Frontier of India.

13. “North East India Region: Vision 2020.”

14. According to the estimates of the 2011 population census, the overall literacy rate in India is 72.99%.

15. Statistical Handbook of Assam.

16. “Assam Development Report.”

17. Medhi, “Growth and Nutritional Status of School Age Children (6–14 Years) of Tea Garden Worker of Assam.”

18. Endle, The Kacharis.

19. The ‘Assam Movement’ was an ethnonationalist agitation that lasted between 1983 and 1985, against increasing numbers of migrants from Bangladesh settling in Assam. The chief demands of the agitation were to prohibit cross-border migration and to identify and expel illegal migrants. The term ‘indigenous’ is highly contested. Existing discourses on terms like ‘indigenous people’ highlight debates on settlement history, territoriality, customary rules and community rights over nature. In India, protectionist claims are made by different groups on the basis of historical settlement, isolationist policies, cultural distinctiveness or native identities. The politics around khilonjiya or indigenous identity in Assam represent claims on the basis of indigenous identity.

20. Weiner, “The Political Demography of Assam’s Anti-Immigrant Movement.”

21. It is important to note that the AGP candidates fought the 1985 Assam Assembly elections as ‘Independents’ and not under the AGP banner.

22. Saikia, “Political Economy and Changing Organizational Dynamics of the ULFA Insurgency in Assam ULFA.”

23. Bhattacharyya, “NRC, Outreach or ‘Vikas’”.

24. Baruah, “End of One Party Dominance,” 37.

25. Ibid., 40.

26. Bhattacharyya, “NRC, Outreach or ‘Vikas.’”

27. First-past-the-post is a commonly used official term in the study of electoral systems. It means whoever gets the most votes wins (in a single member district electoral system). India and UK and USA have FPTP electoral systems where winner is candidate with the most votes.

28. Neyazi, Political Communication and Mobilization: The Hindi Media in India.

29. Jeffrey, India’s Newspaper Revolution, 9.

30. Ibid., 10.

31. “Wireless Data Services in India.”

32. Dutta, “Smartphone Sales And Literacy Rate Goes Hand-In-Hand In India.”

33. Semetko et al., The Formation of Campaign Agendas.

34. Sethi & Shubhrastha, The Last Battle.

35. The National Register of Citizens (NRC), was a draft list of genuine Indian citizens, and was first drafted for the state of Assam in 1951 in the face of mounting cross-border illegal migration from East Pakistan (which later became the independent nation of Bangaldesh) to Assam. In 2003, the Government of India passed the Citizenship (Registration of Citizenship and the Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules 2003 to update the existing NRC, with the objective of ascertaining the citizenship status of people residing in Assam. In 2018 the Supreme Court ruled the draft NRC, which excluded tens of thousands was only a draft that should not be the basis for final action and the Election Commission of India (ECI) confirmed voting rights would continue for those who were not on the final draft list.

36. The Citizenship Act of 1955 has been amended several times in post-independent India to make new provisions to citizenship. The Citizenship Act (1955) provides a definition of illegal migrants. The Act was amended in 1985 after the Assam Movement. As per the provisions of the Assam Accord, the Act states that 24 March 1971 would be considered as the cut-off date for entry into Assam for determining Indian citizenship. Migrants who crossed over into India after the cut-off date would be deemed illegal.

37. Personal interview with the General Secretary, Assam Pradesh Congress Committee, 11 November 2019.

38. Ibid., 2019.

39. Kaushal, “BJP Identifies 160 Lok Sabha seats as Digital Constituencies.”

40. Neyazi et al., “Campaigns, Digital Media and Mobilization in India.”

41. Ibid., 413.

42. Personal interview with the General Secretary of BJP, Guwahati, Assam State unit, 15/10/2019.

43. Fieldwork conducted by Basumatary, Partha; visit to public meetings during election campaigns, February & March 2019, Guwahati.

44. Fieldwork conducted by Basumatary, Partha, March 2019.

45. Wallace, “India’s 2019 Elections,” 362.

46. “Lok Sabha Elections Campaign Tracker.” Times of India.

47. Personal interview with the General Secretary of AIUDF, 31/10/2019.

48. Personal interview with the News Editor, Pratidin Time, 25/10/2019.

49. Personal interview with Editor-in-Chief, News Live, 29/10/2019.

50. Ibid., 2019.

51. Arabaghatta Basavaraj et al. The COVID-19–Social Identity–Digital Media Nexus in India: Polarization and Blame.

52. Menon and Goodman, India Covid Crisis: Did election rallies help spread the virus?

53. Sharma, Assembly polls 2021: Telephony divide in rural areas of poll-bound Assam & West Bengal.

54. See @INCAssam and @5Guarantee.

55. Patel and Nath, Rahul Gandhi releases Congress manifesto for Assam polls, promises to nullify the CAA, give 5 lakh government jobs.

56. See @BJP4India post of the ten promises

https://twitter.com/hashtag/10SankalpForAxom?src=hashtag_click.

57. The Hindu, 2021.

58. Available at: https://twitter.com/hashtag/HBSCampaignTrail?src=hashtag_click.

59. NDTV, No CAA In Assam If Congress Comes To Power, Says Rahul Gandhi.

60. See https://fb.watch/aHl7qq1nUE.

61. See Gandhi, https://www.facebook.com/rahulgandhi.

62. See Assam State Portal, https://assam.gov.in/honble-dignitaries/211.