SCL worked across Assembly elections in India, helping parties target their audiences based on factors such as caste, as well as for several Lok Sabha candidates during the 2009 general election, according to documents made public by Christopher Wylie, the Cambridge Analytica whistle blower who on Tuesday highlighted the company’s ‘extensive’ work in India, and named Congress as its client.
The documentation on SCL and SCL India – part of the SCL Group, of which Cambridge Analytica is part – was put on Twitter by Mr. Wylie on Wednesday, in the wake of huge interest from India following his testimony to the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee.
“This is what modern colonialism looks like,” he wrote. The documents provide a snapshot of the in-depth work the company was able to carry out during elections and beyond, for more than a decade based on “micro-level” information on households, across 600 districts, and 7 lakh villages. “Our services help clients to identify and target key groups within the population to effectively influence their behaviour to realise a desired outcome,” the company boasted in the material that highlighted its India-related work. The Ghaziabad-headquartered company had branches across the country.
The document only named the Janata Dal (United), and did not mention Congress.
The earliest work referred to was during the 2003 Rajasthan elections, when it carried out two pieces of work focused on a “major state” party’s “organisational strength” and also the voting population, including their attitudes and behaviour.
Other work included the 2003 Madhya Pradesh elections, for a “national party,” and electoral research and strategy for the Janata Dal (United) during the Bihar elections in 2010. Caste-based research and strategising is referred to extensively in the documents. “SCL undertook a behavioural research programme targeting over 75% of households to assist the client in not only identifying the correct battlegrounds, but also the right audiences, messages and most importantly the right castes to target with their campaigns,” said SCL in its description of its involvement in the Bihar Assembly elections.
The company was also involved in two pieces of caste-related work in U.P. in 2011 and 2012, to help identify core and swing voters, and the best way to mobilise supporters. “Caste research informs the definition of the target audience, the extent of voter mobilisation, and/or inhibition and the overall campaign strategy and message,” said SCL in separate documentation.
While Mr. Wylie’s reference to Congress has kicked up a political storm, Paul-Olivier Dehaye, of PersonalData.IO, a company that helps monitor and control the use of personal data, who also provided testimony to the committee called on Indian, Romanian and Kenyan journalists to piece together the sequence of events leading up to the death of Mr. Wylie’s predecessor, Romanian national Dan Muresan, who died in Kenya.
Mr. Dehaye said that his understanding was that, while Muresan, purportedly worked for the Congress, he had been paid by a billionaire to undermine it. “He was pretending to work for one party but was actually paid underhand by someone else,” Mr. Dehaye told the committee on Tuesday.
Here is what Wylie has tweeted:
A screenshot of whistleblower Christopher Wylie's tweet that shows SCL offices in India.
