The Modi Effect

Electronic book text

Inside Narendra Modi's campaign to transform India

How did a 'chai wallah' who sold tea on trains as a boy become Prime Minister of India?

On May 16, 2014, Narendra Modi was declared the winner of the largest election ever conducted anywhere in the world, having fought a campaign that was a master-class in modern electioneering. His team created an election machine that broke new ground in the use of social media, the Internet, mobile phones and digital technologies. Modi took part in more than 6,000 public events, but in such a vast country it was impossible to visit every town and village. The solution? A 'virtual Modi' - a life-size 3D hologram - beamed to parts he could not reach in person.

Former BBC correspondent and Downing Street communications expert Lance Price has been granted exclusive access to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his team of advisers. With complete freedom to tell it as he finds it, he details the story of Modi's rise to power and the election victory that amazed the world.

The international community suddenly had to deal with a man who had been a pariah in the West, denied a visa to the United States and given the diplomatic cold shoulder by other nations because of his reputation as an extremist. But with his 2014 victory Modi answered his critics in the way politicians love most - with a resounding election victory in the world's biggest democracy.

Just as Joe McGinniss's classic The Selling of the President broke new ground in revealing the marketing of Richard Nixon, Narendra Modi and the Election That Shocked the World lifts the lid on a whole new box of tricks, where message-management and IT wizardry combined to create an election-winning machine of fascinating power.

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