We are the smartest democracy!
SUDEEP MUKHIA
TIMESOFINDIA.COM THURSDAY, MAY 13, 2004 07:13:28 PM ]
Don’t be surprised if the media lines up outside the offices of exit pollsters asking for their money back. If there is a definitive picture of India Shining, it’s got to be the result of the 2004 Lok Sabha election.
Very often India’s been labelled as the largest democracy, but that is mainly due to the fact that it has the weight of sheer numbers behind it. What India should be labelled as is the smartest democracy in the world. By far the smartest.
Every exit poll, every political pundit and every single politician who claimed to have read the mind of the electorate has got it so totally wrong. The Indian electorate, the great unwashed masses, have fooled them yet again.
If that’s not smart enough, the ordinary Indian has shown a mind more discerning than a master sommelier, than a buyer of rare art.
Let’s get this straight: the vote that was put into the EVMs was not a clear pro-Congress vote. It was more an anti-BJP vote. Maybe it’s a little unfair to single out the BJP, but they were the largest party in the coalition.
Great Expectations
So how did the BJP get it so wrong? The biggest culprit is the India Shining packaging it created for itself. It’s always easy to argue that India is shining in parts and it’s not in other parts.
That is what the poor BJP leadership tried to explain on several platforms and soapboxes lent to it by the media. In an interview to this website, the second-in-line and deputy PM L K Advani said in so many words : India has just started shining, the whole of the country is yet to shine.
All very reasonable, but what did the India Shining campaign do? It created expectation . There was no way that this expectation could be met in the six years the NDA coalition it led was in power.
Development was made into an election issue in the assembly elections as well as the general election. But simply not enough development on the ground to fulfill the expectation that the slogan created.
Sure, the economy is booming, forex is filling up, the markets are peaking. But that affects a very minute part of the electorate. The rest of them are just left expecting. But, hang on a sec, what about Laloo: he never delivers, but he still wins! But then Laloo is the master marketer. He doesn’t create expectation, he creates the illusion of empowerment at best.
Poor Minority Rapport
The BJP also got some basic calculations wrong. Take the Muslim vote, where a substantial growth could have come from. But again, it played its cards badly. Making statements about peace with Pakistan at a convention to address Muslim voters was a man-made disaster: it re-equated the Indian Muslim with Pakistanis.
The overtly clever move to praise Mulayam Singh in UP was meant to split the Muslim vote. Fielding posterboy candidates like Muslim leader Arif Mohammad Khan (who lost eventually). None of this worked. What could have worked was to have said to the Muslim voter, look, let’s work on modernising madrasas, let’s be proud of the fact that while the rest of the Muslim world is in turmoil, our citizens are completely out of all that.
What would definitely have worked was to have justice done to those who got affected during the Gujarat riots. Is it any wonder then that the BJP has been stripped to half in that state?
Alliance Error
The BJP got its alliances wrong. AIADMK cost it the entire Tamil Nadu. It couldn’t hold on to INLD in Haryana. Its biggest ally, the TDP, got wiped out in Andhra, because of the same reason that the BJP lost across the nation—creating the illusion of development by showcasing a ‘shining’ pocket or two.
The story has been told: deliver or perish. The Congress has got an unexpected windfall. If it thinks it now knows the voter, it better leave packaging to the marketing MBAs.
Politics is far more serious a matter than selling soap. But it’s up to the Indian politicians, really. They are being judged by the world’s smartest voters.
:k:
so when u applying for post of bjp advisor?