Meet political strategist Shubhrastha, who helped BJP win the recent polls in Assam

Political strategist Shubhrastha recalls her fondest memory from her stay in Assam, where the BJP has formed the government, its first in the northeast. A 95-year-old voter in Bokakhat constituency threw a tantrum on polling day when she saw that the EVM machine did not have the BJP symbol, the padum phool (lotus). "It took us a while to explain to her that since we were in an alliance with the Ason Gana Parishad (AGP), the Bokakhat seat was contested by a candidate from that party," says Shubhrastha, who prefers to go by her first name.

That's when the 28-year-old, now in the US for a fellowship, realised that the BJP was ahead, the incident taking away any doubts she may have had. Shubrastha was one of the two stars of the BJP's war room in Assam, along with Harvard-IIT graduate Rajat Sethi.

A student of English Literature from Miranda House with a masters in English from Delhi University, she had joined political strategist Prashant Kishor and helped form the Citizens of Accountable Governance (CAG). She learned the ropes while working with Kishor on Narendra Modi's 2014 campaign and the Bihar elections in 2015 (where Kishor helped the Nitish Kumar-Lalu Prasad combine win the polls), but parted ways with him over "ideological differences", she says.

In Assam, Sethi and she were roped in as poll strategists by BJP leader Ram Madhav. They rented a three-room flat in Hengerabari, Guwahati. "Part of it became our house, and the other part served as our office," she says. By the time the second phase was over, neighbours say, the area was choc-a-bloc with all and sundry – politicians, karyakartas, supporters.

Winning Assam was "very difficult", says Shubhrastha. "If you look at the retrospective electoral data of Assam, you will find that BJP was nowhere in the state's imagination even as a credible opposition in 2011. We had to create enough buzz about a political narrative that was away from all that Congress had historically and ideologically stood for - ali-kuli vote bank tactics, entitlement over empowerment and then the challenge was to set out the affirmative agendas."

Unfortunately, she was not in Guwahati when the numbers started trickling in. As the results emerged, her pact with her friends in Assam to Skype also fell through, and she sat alone in the US, surfing the internet and TV channels.

"I was anxious in the beginning as there is always an element of doubt or 'what if' in poll results. More so for me, because I had taken a leap of faith and was testing a campaign model never tried before in the last two elections I'd been part of. But somewhere, I had immense faith in the master strokes of our ideological mentor, Ram Madhav. The sharp, incisive, insightful and sometimes bold decisions he took at various stages helped a lot in shaping the contours of the campaign," she says.

Notwithstanding their differences, Kishor has taught her a lot, admits Shubhrastha. He taught her to never ignore the vote share of the youth in any political battle. "The youth comprises more than 30 per cent of India's population and it is high time that we cease being vote banks or just message carriers. We need to become more active participants in democracy by directly impacting politics, by taking leadership roles, if not in parliament then elsewhere in politics, so as to represent our own interests," she says.

"He made me realise the perils of a parallel set up against an existing party structure. I was convinced by the end of working in his team that we must build capacities within the party we work for - and that can be done if you stick to just one - by strengthening the party network of karyakartas and trying to keep the core team as lean as possible. Party workers have their ears to the ground and their political capital is their experience," she said.

Another important lesson Kishor imparted was to never sleep on a mistake. "There are no margins of errors in a political bout. Small or big, hammer your opposite camp with sharp critiques of their mistake via different modes of communication, different campaigns, if need be, and try making their mistakes their nemesis," she says, giving the example of the BJP campaign against anti-incumbency in the state that had been ruled by Congress' Tarun Gogoi for 15 years.

Shubhrastha is currently on a month-long Legislative Fellowship Program organised by the US State Department, where she is interning under the Columbus, Ohio House of Representatives and the Senate. "Since this is the big election year in the US, I am also trying to soak in as much as I can about how campaign decisions are made in the Republican and Democrat caucuses," she signs off.