Today in Politics: After making some headway, will the Opposition get down to brass tacks?

The effectiveness of political communication lies in the simplicity of the message. Consider the BJP’s attempt to drive home the point to its workers and leaders that its target in the coming Lok Sabha election is 370-plus seats. At two different events this month, both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah told BJP workers that they would only have to ensure an additional 370 votes per booth compared to five years ago for the target to be achieved.

While not getting to the mathematics of it, the way the BJP’s top two leaders have framed the target shows how they are carefully refining the message they send to the party cadre. And this week, the party’s central election committee may also meet and we can expect the first list of the BJP candidates to be out soon afterwards.

All this to underline that though the INDIA alliance of Opposition parties had a decent few days in the week gone by as its constituents stitched up two major seat-sharing agreements — the Congress and AAP for Delhi, Haryana, Gujarat, and Goa; and the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Congress for Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh — it is just the start of an uphill battle. The tougher part of the job awaits: developing synergy between their cadre, formulating a joint campaign strategy, figuring out and refining their political messaging, and ultimately ensuring that their votes transfer to each other.

One thing to watch out for on Monday and in the coming week will be how the Congress, SP, and AAP proceed on this front. Just arriving at a seat-sharing deal minus a substantive vision or game plan can result in utter failure, as Lalmani Verma writes about the partnership between the Congress and the SP for the UP Assembly elections in 2017.