Once upon a time Indira Gandhi gave the slogan called ‘Garibi hatao’.  It is hard to argue against that.  Recent Samajwadi party’s (SP) election manifesto has come in for criticism since it seems to be against computers.  I tried to read the manifesto myself to see what it contained.  I searched on the web and SP’s website here.  But it is not available on website either.

My first thought was – ‘desperation’.  Ranting against computers would have been ok strategy maybe 20 years ago, and that too for a few banks and govt/PSU employees, but now now.

But more plausible reason seems to be driven more by business style market segmentation and positioning of SP.  The MBA students are taught the virtues of segmenting the market and focusing on your market niche.  Then one needs to have a positioning to differentiate from everyone else and rise over the din and clutter.  This could well be positioning towards their voter base.  I will watch how many seats they actually win.  It could be a case for business students to do post-mortem later.

To their credit, they have their website accessible in Hindi and English both.  The congress website has some accessibility in Hindi (font needs to be installed) and Urdu apart from English.  The BJP has it in English only apart from manifesto.  They need to think about making website accessible to non-English Bharat still !