Chai pe Charcha campaign: Narendra Modi to talk it over tea at tea shops

NEW DELHI: If the hub of heated political chatter in India has been neighbourhood tea shops for as long as anybody can remember, Narendra Modi’s upcoming campaign seeks to place him at the centre of this earthy universe, simultaneously reminding people of his own humble origins as a tea vendor.

Modi is turning the recent jibes by political rivals about his tea vending background into a virtue, by launching a new campaign on February 1 — Chai pe Charcha (discussions over tea).

Executed by Cit izens for Accountable Governance, a youth group mentored by Modi’s campaign back office, the new initiative will see Modi interacting over an advanced video conferencing suite with crowds gathered in 1,000 tea shops across 300 parliamentary constituencies, of the 390 the BJP plans to field a candidate in.

A person familiar with the development said that the technology that will be deployed is a hybrid of broadcast television and the internet. People can watch Modi and also ask him a question. When a question is being asked, people watching at all the centres will see the person asking the question.

It’s a massive, distributed video conferencing initiative. Each session is expected to last 2-3 hours and Modi will do such sessions 7-8 times each month till elections.

The initiative is also meant to rival the sense of immediacy that Aam Aadmi Party’s mohalla sabhas are providing people. As opposed to an impersonal mega rally in a state capital, this initiative brings the Modi campaign closer to voters’ homes.