According to a study by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM), one of the top associations of commerce and industry professionals in India, by the time of the 2014 general election, political consulting in India had grown to become an INR 7–8 billion industry (ASSOCHAM 2014). It was estimated that there were nearly 150 political consulting firms actively operating in India—both in major cities and in small towns and rural areas—that could charge anywhere up to INR 5 million for each constituency in which they were working. These firms could offer services including, but not limited to, voter profiling, media management, PR, campaign planning and constituency-based research, with some candidates using such firms even outside the election season.

The sudden rise and meteoric expansion of political consulting firms in India appears nothing short of miraculous if we note that before 2014, the very mention of political consultants in India was conspicuous by its absence. In the late 1990s, scholar Fritz Plasser conducted a ‘Global Political Consultancy Survey’ which interviewed political consultants, party managers and party employees in 40 countries (Plasser 2000; Plasser and Plasser 2002). Based on the results of the survey, Plasser (2000) found that in contrast to other parts of the world, none of the party managers interviewed in India claimed to have used the services of a political consultant. Furthermore, 77 per cent of all party managers in India expressed doubts about the possibility of ‘American campaign strategies’ ever being replicated in India. This led Plasser (2000, 44) to remark that ‘India is a special case, which can be attributed to the exceptional cultural barriers and the lack of money, as well as the Indian exceptionalism regarding their form of democracy’. Notwithstanding its purported ‘cultural barriers’, in a little over a decade, India witnessed the rise of the multi-million-dollar industry of political consulting. This chapter will demonstrate how the rise and expansion of political consultants can be attributed to an admixture of the demand- and supply-side variables outlined in Chapter 2.