Bengaluru: They are techies, bank employees, sales executives, and content creators. But these elections they have expanded their roles to become volunteers at the “war rooms” of political parties, helping them strategise their campaign and making sure they get their message across to the voters.
With social media having become a powerful tool to reach out to the masses and smart phones having revolutionised the way it operates, those in the war rooms constantly try to be creative while feeding it with new content to create awareness about their parties and candidates.
One volunteer, C. Ravi, working for Bengaluru North candidate of the Congress, Krishna Byregowda, says manning a war room is a challenging , but interesting task. The core team has about 25 members and hundreds of people work in the field in the constituency.
Ask him why he works for Mr. Byregowda and he says he is impressed by his inclusive perspective and unique ideas for development and sustainability. Some of the team members have taken a sabbatical from their jobs to work for the Congress leader, while others are lending a hand in the war room outside work hours, according to him.
“We stay late into the night, planning the content and feed constantly. We also work to spread the good work done by our candidate,” he explains. Another volunteer, Rakesh Prasad, who works for Union minister, D V Sadananda Gowda, contesting on a BJP ticket in the constituency, heads his social media cell and has been monitoring it for the last couple of polls.
“The war room is always lively, buzzing with fresh ideas and ways to use technology for the campaigning. We constantly work at enhancing the image of the candidate and party. Some develop exclusive apps to locate polling stations with ease, while some develop mobile applications to send feeds to a large number of groups at one go,” he explains.
Mr Satish Babu, also a volunteer in Mr Gowda’s war room, says some of the applications developed help in data segregation. The team works at various levels and some in the field for better reach and to get feedback from the voters.As for why he works for the Union minister, he says simply, “ Mr. Gowda has delivered on his promises.”
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