JULY 16- Move over Shiv Khera, Deepak Chopra or Robin Sharma. Narendra Modi, it would seem, is the new motivational speaker in town. At least that is the way the Andhra Pradesh unit of the BJP is projecting him as.
On August 11, the Gujarat chief minister will come calling on Hyderabad and is slated to address a one lakh strong gathering at the city’s Lal Bahadur stadium. And if you want to be in the audience, you will need to shell out five rupees as delegate fee. The BJP says this will be a novel move as hitherto political parties hire crowds to listen to their leaders. “But such is the magnetic pull of Narendra Modi that no one would mind spending money to listen to him,” says Kishen Reddy, president of the Andhra Pradesh unit of the BJP.
The money collected will be used for relief work in Uttarakhand.
In a move that seems intended to blunt Rahul Gandhi’s youth image, Modi is being presented as a youth icon. The plan also is to get most of the crowd that day in the 18-40 years age bracket. And in keeping with Modi’s considerable following in the virtual world, ‘tickets’ can even be booked online.
Over the next few days, the party plans to put up hoardings in all villages in districts around Hyderabad. The idea is to get representatives from all villages in Telangana region to listen to Modi. The state BJP is banking on a combination of Telangana slogan, Hindutva and Modi appeal to do well in the ten districts of Telangana in the 2014 elections. Having promised to deliver on Telangana within months of coming to power at the centre, the BJP hopes the Modi factor will help it do better than the other political parties who also are riding the Telangana bandwagon.
The BJP will next take Modi to Rajahmundry in East Godavari district to woo the farmers. And if the Hyderabad experiment turns out to be a success, the BJP would have sown the seeds for a new way of campaigning.
INDIA TODAY
