A Billion Votes, A Billion Hopes in 2019 (Part 2): Iss Baar Fir, Kiski Sarkaar…

“Iss baar Modi ka Wapis aana mushkil hai”! (This time its difficult for Modi to return to power) claimed a grocery shopkeeper. The other customer standing on the counter responded “Mushkil to hai… Par aayega firse Modi.. Baaki sab chor hai” (Yes its difficult.. But still Modi will return – Rest are thieves). These market conversations in India are sometimes the best indicator of the winds in Indian elections context, mostly better than the experts predicting the biggest festival of Democracy in the world. With around 90 Crore voters, Indian elections are biggest Democratic event across the globe, and to put it in context the most complicated one keeping in mind that Indian is referred as a sub-continent with most heterogeneous population.


5 Years back when Modi was campaigning for BJP as a PM candidate, I had mentioned that out of various challenges he would face, the biggest would be to live upto the expectations he was setting up amongst the public at large in case he wins. After the historic mandate BJP won in 2014, Modi has been tirelessly working to deliver on those expectations he had set up – But he should have expected this when he was promising the moon to the electorate 5 years back. Modi might still like to take the credit that one thing which has remained constant is that 5 years back the elections revolved around him as a challenger, 5 years later the entire elections again revolve around Modi – This time as an incumbent – This happens to be the biggest challenge in a country like India where anti-incumbency is generally stronger than pro-incumbency, especially at Centre.

After having followed the campaigning for last several months, it would be safe to say that though the country is voting to select 543 Members to the Parliament, essentially barring a few states in South India, almost on every seat people are voting either For or Against Modi. Like 2014, elections have again been converted into a presidential contest. The Big difference is that the opposition has made certain strategic partnerships to corner the NDA government in certain key states like UP, Bihar and Karnataka in addition to the fact that BJP is facing anti-incumbency in several Hindi heartland states where it lost power to Congress in recent state polls. Understanding the challenge at hand, the BJP has worked on a two prong strategy – To try and retain maximum possible seats in the North and West where it almost swept las time and gain in North East, West Bengal and Orrisa to compensate for its losses in the heartland states.

Buoyant Congress is expecting to make gains under more confident Rahul from its 44 tally in 2014 from the states where it won in recent state elections and with some pacts it has sealed with DMK, TDP and RJD. Non NDA and non UPA regional parties are again very optimistic with likes of Mayawati, Akhilesh hopeful of Mahagathbandan in UP (BSP joining hands with SP and RLD), Mamta in West Bengal, YSR in Andhra, Naveen Patnaik in Orrisa, KCR hoping TRS clean sweep in Telangana are all hoping to get maximum seats in their respective states to be in a position to call the shorts in case NDA was unable to get past the magic 272 mark. Out of these, the Key state which is likely to make the most impact to this 3rd front fortunes as well as the fortune of NDA is Uttar Pradesh which sends maximum 80 MP’s to parliament. After getting drubbing in 2014 LS polls and later in 2017 State elections, regional heavy weights joined hand to put a formidable counter to Modi-Yogi pair in UP as their joint total exceeds the BJP votes in both last elections in many constituencies. NDA seems mentally prepared to lose from its historic 73 seats in 2014 in the state, the only thing nobody can ascertain before 23rd May is the extent of this loss – This along with the gains BJP can make in Bengal and Orrisa will decide the fate of next Government.

NDA has tried to intervene multiple threads to woo voters this time and pacify the unhappy ones. It has again projected Modi as Messiah of honesty, integrity and strong leader country can bank on. Alongside they have run parallel themes to consolidate their supporters through Hindutva, National security (Balakot – which found maximum mention in entire campaign), foreign policy success and development initiatives in terms of last mile delivery of their schemes – namely Ujjala (Gas for women), Swatch Bharat, Ayush Bharat (Healthcare scheme launched), direct transfer to farmers, bank accounts for poor, huge boost in Infrastructure – It has really touched the lives of Indians in one way or the other. To Modi’s credit, he has managed to run a fairly clean Government, much better than the UPA’s 2009-14 rule especially on corruption and inflation, which were key in the rout of the UPA in 2014. This coupled with its development initiatives has helped it convert anti-incumbency into a pro-incumbency to a very large extent. On the flip side, Unemployment, healthcare, and rural farmers distress were areas where it is getting negative feedback from many quarters – Only if opposition could focus more sharply on these rather than going with “Chowkidar Chor Hai” on Rafale, which due to lack of facts did not resonate with the masses and backfired in terms of “Main Bhi Chowkidar” campaign led by Modi from the forefront.

Kautilya had written if opposition gangs up against the ruler, be assured he is an honest one! This time opposition seems hell bent to remove Modi – hardly giving a credible Alternate. Only 23rd May will tell if our Chowkidar gets another term to build on the base he has prepared to make India a stronger developed nation or if the Chowkidar is changed for being a “Jumlebaaz”. But personally having interactions with fellow countrymen in last 6 months and closely monitoring public reactions through various platforms in last 3 months post Balakot, one should not be surprised if we have not yet picked the ground level support in favour of Modi – Which could translate into a similar or even a better outcome for NDA as compared to their performance in 2014. If that was the case, hope Modi 2.0 will be even better for our nation.

We will get our answer soon, but hope the results bring the best contender to Delhi and may God give him the strength to run our country more efficiently and make it a global superpower. Jai Hind!

The Day India votes for Development…

Short sightedness is sometimes worst than being not able to see, as it takes away the vision, the bright things which could have been a part of our future. But we mostly tend to be short sighted; after all, we are humane.
Elections are again around the corner & we can see something all across the spectrum: Promises, Promises & more Promises! & We are voters who are humane. We get carried away when someone from our caste is standing from our constituency, irrespective of whether we will ever see him before the next elections. We get influenced if a party promises some extra quota for our community, irrespective of whether they will actually yield benefits on the ground. Then we at times get so frustrated for being promised and then ignored that we decide not to vote for anybody. But then if we need to vote again, we would prefer to vote for candidate who is from our religion and the party which promises our community the moon, even if they have been doing it for the past 5 terms! We don’t care if they are corrupt and criminals as long as they are from same caste.

It is this tendency which has been exploited by various parties to keep us engaged for over six decades now. It has been now 65 years to be precise. Different parties have ruled, some at centre, some at states. The quota has been prevalent for the under privileged sections. Endless promises have been made to the minorities by different parties. Dreams have been sold to the majority masses as well to create a paradise for them on earth. But do we see the masses having got benefit of all which was planned and promised to them. I am sure irrespective of our background & political affiliations; we all would be unanimous in our response to this query. Because if the backward sections had derived the benefits of these schemes, today they would have been at par with the advanced sections in society and we would have been discussing to phase out the quota politics rather than sustaining/increasing those numbers. The political Diaspora is well versed with this fact. It is this primary reason that instead of showcasing their development efforts in their report card, they focus on getting the “appropriate” candidate who the major chunk of constituency would relate to and then show them same old wine of promises in a new bottle. The problem is the ones who talk about development; even they do their caste calculations & constituency profiling to get on the winning side. But the bigger problem is; that it actually works!

Though the picture is not totally grim, as in the last decade we have some definite examples where masses have rewarded the development efforts of our leaders. Sheila Dixit was voted back to power for the third time in 2008, thanks to the development efforts she has made to create a Delhi which seems almost a model state as compared to its peers. Narendra Modi would wish if he could erase the dark pages in Gujarat’s history witnessed around a decade back which is used by opposition to run him down. Because apart from it, he has written such a glorious development chapter for the state that he was not only voted back in 2007 but also has been lately hinted being the party’s nominee for the PM’s post at centre. Then the most recent has been the case of the politician who has turned around the fate of India’s one of the most backward state. The state in question is Bihar and the leader being referred is Nitish Kumar. He has redefined the definition of development in the state of Bihar known to vote only for the caste, promises & stage drama! But the thumping victory for Nitish in last year’s polls has highlighted a very important aspect of Indian democracy: That we also vote for Development and if we get people who work for us, we would go all out to extend our support to them without getting into the dream world of promises. Anti-incumbency is a reflection of poor performance, but then the ruling party is aware & hopeful while moving out that it will again get a chance next time as the opposition gaining power will not be able to deliver on bloated promises. Hence it starts preparing for better & bigger promises with better target strategy in terms of profiling of masses for the next elections! Thus non-performance gives a chance to all rather than better performance!

We all would collectively pray for a day when we would see a minority voter choosing the Saffron candidate who has transformed his constituency for a better life for his family. We would be glad to see the right wing hardliner family voting for a non Saffron government which has worked wonders for their state, their constituency, their neighborhood. Let us all country men get together and start exercising our voting rights more judiciously. Let us promise ourselves; not voting is not the way out. We need to vote & make our vote count. Aam aadmi needs to vote for the future of the Aam aadmi. Lets get our message straight to our leaders: kindly PERFORM! Let us all “Humane” get over the politics of caste & creed and start voting for the politics of Development to set the precedence for our leaders to work for us. Probably our future would be brighter, one where leaders would compete to outdo each other for developing our society, our NATION. Jai Hind!