Team Blitz India
ROADSHOW, a concept borrowed from corporate marketing, is a comparatively new tool in political messaging. However, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the architect of the new BJP, has perfected the art of using it as mode of communication with the electorate.
After deploying it with telling effect in 2019, he is using it effectively in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections. According to media reports, PM Modi has already conducted more than a dozen roadshows since the announcement of General Elections 2024. Another two dozen are scheduled in coming days.
“Unprecedented” is how poll watchers described the public response to his mega roadshow in Ghaziabad in the NCR region. The turnout and the enthusiasm witnessed at other roadshows – held in different nooks and corners of the country, ranging from Arunachal Pradesh to Kerala – was no different.
In electoral parlance, a roadshow is a pitch to potential voters and political parties are increasingly resorting to it to drum up support for their candidates. However, PM Modi’s sales pitch is different. Instead of asking people to vote for his party, the thrust of his roadshows is to enlarge people’s engagement with his vision of ‘Viksit Bharat’. And it has evoked universal endorsement from the people. For, at its core, Viksit Bharat seeks to unleash their latent potential, creativity, enterprise, and innovation to drive sustainable and equitable development.
PM Modi has repeatedly said connecting directly with the people is a source of inspiration for him. Although he constantly promotes his vision on social media, a face-to-face contact gives him an adrenalin rush; as is evident from the pictures alongside taken from some of his roadshows.
