Year ago. Our discussion today will revolve around new book that has generated a fair amount of buzz in india already. The modi effect inside Narendra Modis campaign to transform india. The book is significant the book is insignificant part based on interviews with author lance price had with modi in his Campaign Advisers in the weeks of the election. Lance price was given exclusive access to speak with them. We are very fortunate to have lance price with us today who will talk about the boat in detail. Hes a writer and political commentator on reports and regularly on the cbs show up to the minute. Also a journalist on bbc and also has served as media adviser to former british Prime Minister, tony blair. The format will essentially be a followup. I will post a series of questions and well have a conversation for about 20 or 25 minutes or so. We will give an opportunity for the commentator to offer some brief reactions for any of you who dont know him hes a correspondent for the hindu. Guess an academic background and has written a book on poverty in india. Before we get started, just wanted to note that for those who would like to live to eat the event, we encourage that. Those of you watching it live web stream, just please use hash tag modi. So with that, lets go ahead and get started. Lance i will start with a question that is more about you than about modi. As i said before you were given in exclusive access interview and you have the freedom to write about the story and not granted all that many extended interviews about the campaign. The question is why do you think modi granted you a foreign journalist that has no major prior connection exclusive access and the privilege to have the story. Thank you michael. Thank you for the introduction. I was a question i was asked in delhi recently and one of the first questions that all the indian journalist asked me was why you and not us because he hasnt made himself available to indian journalist. As i detailed the book he didnt make himself available very much during the campaign it there which is sent to repack about later on the way in which we related to its own. I dont have a definitive answer to that question. They were too big for thinking. One was that they wanted somebody from outside india to do it look because they felt clearly it had been a huge event in indian politics in india generally. It hasnt been widely recognized outside the country. I followed it through the media but i was very conscious that somebody in britain when you have your elections here in the state, every single little tiny happenstance during the election gets covered in british media. Which is sort of go gaga over it. Its ridiculous. Heres an election and the largest democracy of the world. Former british colony somewhere where we have strong links with lots and lots of indian people in britain and it got a little bit of coverage here and there. Not very much. They felt that they would like their Elections Campaign to be recognized outside of india more widely and he compared some of the triumphs and campaigns we do talk about more regularly in the blast. The other reason was i cannot help but they relatively fresh pair of eyes. Most people in india and narayan does better than me. They are either in favor or very much against him. Hes that kind of politician. I think they wanted somebody to come made could be a bit more unbiased about it. I came from a different political. Ive been on the centerleft of politics. Hes happy to be described as a rightwing politician, antinationalists and some people described in an even less faster terms i still know. Perhaps the last little ingredient that helped me secure interviews was a bad one of the books ive read the diaries i publish about working for blair, which was about being on the inside of government at the highest level. So i guess those three factors came together to get me the opportunity. So tell us a bit about your impressions of modi starting with your first initial impressions in the very first few pages of the book. Talk a little bit about where you stop right off the bat and also not just the initial impressions, but the impressions that formed more and more. Additionally, the interviews you had with modi were about the campaign, about the election but also covered other things as well. Take a few minutes to tell us about the themes he likes to talk about the mess, what he preferred to avoid to talk about. Did he open up at all on the issue of the riot in 2002 and also for the sake of our audience in washington did he offer any thoughts about the United States and about his view of the u. S. India relationship . Well, i dont want to brag, but i spent a few Prime Minister said president s in the course of my career. Up and worked for i had been in the company of some interesting people, including bill clinton here in washington. So im not certain if faced by meeting Prime Ministers. And he is an extraordinary man and a very very asthmatic man. I spent maybe five hours within the terms of interviews since the book came out. Throughout all of the time i was meeting modi the politician. I was meeting set for the front man who was presenting himself talking about achievements in campaign and with varying frankness and i will come to some of the specifics you asked about. I dont think at the end of all of that time i can tell you much about modi than men. Im not sure how many people ever get to meet modi the man. Hes a politician like no other ive ever encountered. He works from five in the morning he told me. He wakes up about 5 00 in the morning. But then for five minutes is connected to the internet and reading the latest news. He goes to bed usually midnight. He never takes a day off never has a vacation. Doesnt have a wife and family come at us and watch telly, doesnt watch sports games. He just works. And i expressed some surprise that that because they like their vacations. They need to relax and all the rest of it to deal with the pressures and so on. One indian friend said to me just remember a lot of people have to work from the second i wake up until the moment they go to bed at night. Its not that unusual. But one area of his personal life is that he sets aside time for spiritual activities every day, for meditation and for yoga, which is clearly very important to him. Sometimes at moments of quite high attention when the Election Results are coming in. The media in india for reporting he was at home watching the results come in on television and he told me that wasnt true at all. Theyve been told they want to disturb them at all. He was just interest back in. He was meditating. He was doing whatever he does as part of a spiritual activities. That he was willing to talk about or two of those two. Are reluctant to talk about family personal stuff. There was one Election Campaign, a huge rally when bombs went off six people were killed before he was due to speak and he decided that it should go ahead anyway despite the security people all saying it should be canceled. He said no, i have a duty to do this. Im going to go ahead. I said to him maybe if you have a wife and family, you wouldve thought more about personal security before you set that decision. It was the one time that he paused and didnt have an answer ready for me. He said well how can i answer that question . Did he say they do have mother and as you have others. But hes very comfortable about opening up about anything in that respect. The riots, the terrible attack on the trade and the rights and graduate in 2002 i expected because obviously id read other peoples experiences of interviewing and so on was one area he closed down very quick way. I cover it in sufficient detail in the book. Most of that is what he said previously about it all appeared to me he just said i said enough about that. You can go and read the report put together by the Investigation Team to the Supreme Court in india and read the conclusions. It is pretty clear i wasnt going to get any further with that. In a sense, that was fair enough because i didnt see it as my job to reinvestigate. That was my role. I was there to write a book about the campaign. I had to explain in detail for people outside india who were familiar with what happened in 2002 with the story was but also had some impact on the campaign in him as a candidate and whether or not he was the obvious candidate why he was a controversial candidate. So that was one area he closed down on. On america he was remarkably sort of forgiving if that is the right word. You did keep them out of your country for the first part of a decade. I think diplomatically its fair to say the United States was fairly slow to readmit into the fold compared to my country britain or the European Union or other countries around the world. Peaches that i put that out of my mind it didnt allow it to affect me and my ego. It was clear that he wanted to have the relationships and he wanted to move ahead. I spoke to him after he had been here in this huge reception in Madison Square garden central park and speaking here in washington as well so on and so forth. It at least that meant a lot to him. He needs he is not about what you think of him as a politician i guess. He recognizes he needs a partnership with the United States and he will achieve economic goals in this country. Interesting. Lets move on to the campaign of south, which is the core focus of the book. There was a point in the book where you said was made modi Prime Minister was his ability to marshal a campaign that could reach more at the indian people than ever before at election time. Why dont you unpack that comment. For me it chews things that struck me reading through your analysis of the campaign was on the one hand the structure of the campaign that you describe it command control and more of an ecosystem. That is the specific word you use. The thing that struck me was the heavy emphasis on technology. For instance, the use of these modi holograms that essentially made it look like he was present in places where he was not. When i think about holograms that tend to think about objects in the period at the Billboard Music awards as a hologram and not indian politicians. So if you could talk about this notion of how he was able to reach more indian people than ever before an election, and terms of how the campaign was structure and the tools that were used that allowed him to reach so many people. One of the interesting things about campaigns i think is that it was both very oldfashioned and very modern. The oldfashioned that was the rallies. I think in america and certainly britain, people are reluctant to go to Public Meetings anymore. They really get engaged a Public Meeting for that kind of style, the politics that it is today. The revised that. That started happening in india as well. People are less interested in Public Engagement whereas modi just took his roadshow out and they flocked to him in the hundreds of thousand tcf. With there without the hologram. So that was interesting actually. Some of the oldfashioned side of politics has been revitalized in another aspect of the campaign we take for granted, which i had never occurred to me was heavily deployed in indiana was going out of knocking on peoples doors. We think doorstep political work is the key to success. And so it is. Whereas even in parts of urban india, is saying what you vote for us and then go into making sure that they have wasnt something that wouldve been particularly familiar in this kind oldfashioned to us which weve come to rather late. They make that very effective. The other side was a very, very modern campaign. So he looked at obamas campaign in britain and australia and elsewhere and he actually said we could do better than that. And i say that because he allowed social media to do what it does best, which is have a conversation. He didnt try to control it. Weve got a British Election just under way back home which im going to go back and start commenting and covering. Every day on my phone i got messages. I guess tweet and i pressed the delete button as soon as they appeared because i know full well they are an extension of the usual propaganda that ive are divided with just the boring. This was boring. In this lively. It was interesting. He managed to clear out stories that kept the debate going and the ecosystem, the bit of the ecosystem looking after social media was being done by people who have no real involvement but would be clear to come in for the whole thing. A lot of it confused by modi and been given the opportunity to show what they could do. It is interesting that roel gandhi was in his 20s or Something Like that was also the same sort of thing and i cannot say ouch for the receiver to him first. Hes a young guy who responds to this. And modi said no. It isnt like that. And modi took a completely different view. A lot of kids now have that smartphones and even if not everybody could get access to what was being said on social media if younger people would appear in social media, they see their families and would tell everybody else. They also use social media quite brilliantly to more or less forced the traditional india to dance to his tune. As they stand out there for tony blair, Communications Director for the labour party to put it more formally. We all know what that job involves. He was a good candidate to get the media to tell the story your way. Modi was remarkably successful. Partly by rationing his availability. He didnt do sit down tv interviews until very late in the campaign. Didnt give them to the englishspeaking media and some most people were voting. He basically said to them, i will set the agenda. You are not. You can write about what i said, what i tweet but if you want to talk to me, you have to wait until im ready for you and that was surprisingly effective. It was just good oldfashioned doorstep campaign and just quickly on the hologram, of course there is an enormous country that would be impossible for anyone to get around all day. But there were parts of the country described as dark villages where most people dont have television. They dont have access to the media in the same sense of urban areas would do. Not across the entire country. That wouldve been impossible. In significant areas, and the big stage he would find out fully subtracts without the satellite equipment, generators and everything necessary to be himself alive into the market wire. She went home to his headquarters and out to a hundred different places simultaneously with the admin here had and he would see questions as well. They then set up a little fair. Fourstar, just having this guy was like something out of star trek. Imagine what an electrifying impact that would have been many places. But they sat in front of huge fans of his hair would move a little bit. They thought people would think it was the real him. That he had hair to blow a gas. Lets fastforward to the postelection environment. The book covers the Election Campaign and also the aftermath of the bjp modis party continued to ride on a collection for a number of months after the election and won a series of key state elections. However, in february this year the bjp lost this election in new delhi which in its short existence has campaigned on basic issues, things like clean water, cheap electricity, less corruption as well. And you covered this in your book, which is impressive. This happened in february. Your book was published a few weeks ago. You covered the setbacks for the bjp. The question is what do you think is the sat back in this new delhi state election tells us about the bjp and its strategy. Does this suggest despite other fancy hocuspocus in the Technology Described despite all of that at the end of the day it is the issues and particularly breadandbutter issues that will ultimately carry the day in an Election Campaign. Do you think that could be the case or should we see this as a case of the bjp getting complacent or is there Something Else . At the former and the latter. There was a touch of complacency in the bjp and the mastermind behind a lot of the strategy work thought that modi modi come to modi would be enough. If you remember they won every single seat and less than a year later they won three out of 70 seats in the state assembly and the other 67 with an astonishing setback. To be fair, the bjp voted and the congress did collapse and pretty much went to the aap party, which helped. Principally as we know america entries, National Election of local elections are Different Things and you have to have a local election very much on local issues. My understanding of what i saw that they were able they had a good manifesto that was very focused on specific issues. They had a good ground campaign. They threw everything at it from the moment the general elections over for focusing. The nearest parallel is probably obama losing seats. You think you got it wrapped up in you suddenly discover that you have in. Final question i will post to you is that there has been several other books written on the 2014 Election Campaign in indiana, including several of the exclusive interviews with modi. One of them as you know made quite a splash called 2014 the election that changed india, similarly titled to your book written by a prominent indian journalist who you interview at your book. What would you say distinguishes your book from his book other than the fact the authors are different. One is indian, one is not. Do they complement each other . I hope they complement each other. My publisher is likely to say its because i the exclusive access. He is one of the leading makers in india. His was a very personal look at the campaign itself. He was covering it. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and i quote from it in mind and im happy to pay tribute to what i think is an excellent book. His book was on the campaign so he tried to give equal balance to the campaign and someone into the other elements of the campaign, which i didnt try to do. Mine was unashamedly exclusively about the modi campaign. Some of the other individuals