Professional Elections Campaigns:
A new age of Electoral Politics in India

In India, Political Consulting is hardly a decade-old Tech. Based discourse driven by the number of outsiders hired to run the democratic process is increasing, comprising Political Analysts, Consultants, Engineers, Content Writers, Graphic Designers, and Fresh Graduates with a particular kind of "professional" angle.

These Political Experts, Technocratic professionals, and consultants often see their expanded role as heightening democratic participation. However, it is still being determined and remains a secret in general how such professionals by political parties and leaders target election campaigns, mine private data, and potentially manipulate voters and influence the display of political promises made by leaders to an electorate.

Consequently, voters elect representatives who hire external professionals to make their policies, campaigns, and image-making and shape the voting preferences in a highly organized and technocratic way. Ideally, the democratic process is about more than just elections. Electing political representation is the cornerstone of a representative democracy.

The professionals of hired firms help with the political persuasion of leaders with corporate advertising through unique ways that influence voter behavior and firmly put the campaign message of Political Parties and Leaders. Political consulting can be traced to other parts of the world as far back as the 1930s. In the United States, Baxter and Whitaker started Campaigns, Inc. spearheading advertising techniques for political campaigning and pioneering new methods of persuasion through targeted messaging, pamphlets, and narrativizing. Over the next several decades, Madison Avenue advertising professionals participated in a few presidential campaigns..

However, it took until the 1980s for the term "political consultant" to be considered a full-fledged and profitable business (Johnson 2016). Political Consulting developed a lucrative business of politics by discovering new ways to organize business in politics.

Whether Indian political parties campaign based on ideologically coherent platforms or a coalition-centric struggle for power is a long-running debate. Regardless, consultants' growing control over election campaigns and political ideas fastly connects leaders with their electorate and provides opportunities for issue-based discussions and an approach to problem-solving, which in some way or other helps in improving the good governance process.

In India, since 2014, the mechanisms of National, Assembly, and Municipal election campaigns are fastly being handed over to political consultants. On the other hand, foot soldiers, cadres, and on-the-ground party workers continue to work in a traditional party structure. However, they are increasingly directed by young professionals working as Political Consultants with legitimacy from the top party leadership. Fundamentally, political consultants work with parties to win elections and further help maintains good governance post-elections.