Can Sunil Kanugolu bring India’s Modi down, 10 years after helping him win?
Al Jazeera
As India’s election kicks off, a top election strategist is looking for cracks in the Modi brand he helped create.
A small crack in one of the pillars supporting the world’s largest lift-irrigation project was the opening that Sunil Kanugolu was looking for as he shepherded the election campaign of the opposition Congress party in the southern Indian state of Telangana late last year.
Up against the regional Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) party whose leader K Chandrashekhar Rao had ruled Telangana since the state’s birth a decade earlier, the Congress, riding on disenchantment over alleged corruption and nepotism, was polling well.
But Kanugolu, the in-house election mastermind of the Indian National Congress or Congress party, wanted something more — something that would drive home his party’s advantage, based on a mantra that’s central to his approach.
“No election is ever won by logic. Emotions win elections,” the 40-year-old says often, according to a close confidant who requested anonymity.
In Telangana, a member of Kanugolu’s team found a photograph of the small crack in the Kaleshwaram lift irrigation project that morphed into a poll strategy to topple the BRS from power.
