Will Modi’s magic do the trick today?
dubai — Today, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will know whether the dirty campaign that has marked the Gujarat state elections with more raucous sound than substance has panned out for him. Every trick, every insult that he and the newly anointed prince of the Congress, Rahul Gandhi, used or swapped came into play, bringing democratic trysts with the hustings to a new low.
As things stand, today will be the acid test for the PM because this is his home state, and anything less than the 115 seats his Bharatiya Janata Party holds today in the assembly will be seen as a drop and this dip will place pressure on him as his central government goes to the polls in 2019 for another term.
For Rahul, the cup is dealt with another measure. If Rahul gets more than the current 57 seats his party has in the house of 183 members, he can crow and he will. But it has to be substantial as in at least 30 more seats. By tonight the trends will indicate if this is on the cards.
dubai — By this time today Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will know whether the dirty campaign that has marked the Gujarat elections with more raucous sound than substance has panned out for him. Every trick, every insult that he and the newly anointed prince of the Congress, Rahul Gandhi, used or swapped came into play bringing democratic trysts with the hustings to a new low.
As things stand, today will be the acid test for the PM because this is his home state, his turf and anything less than the 115 seats his BJP party holds today in the assembly will be seen as a drop and this dip will place pressure on him as his central government goes to the polls in 2019 for another term. Even one seat more will not only totally put to rest the slew of monsters in the dark cave like GST and demonetisation and the dangers of the Hindutva movement, polarisation of the minorities and the intellectual brigade’s impatience with the Modi sleight of mouth if not hand.
For Gandhi the cup is dealt with another measure. Why on earth in a no holds barred election his elevation to his mother’s position as Congress president was delayed to after the votes were in is inexplicable. Though one can only second guess that impact it would hardly have been negative if the voters had seen the future, so to speak.
If Gandhi gets more than the current 57 seats his part has in the house of 183 members he can crow and he will. But it has to be substantial as in at least thirty more seats. By tonight the trends will indicate if this is on the cards.
The magic number is 92. If one wishes to make a prediction Modi is likely to cross that figure although his lieutenant Amit Shah’s claim to obtaining 150 plus might seem a little farfetched.
The other factor that will get attention in media and also have the potential to add a touch of bitterness to a sweet victory for the BJP would be a slide in the popular vote and the narrowness of the wins. This, in the Congress camp, would be seen as a sign that the Modi magic has lost its lustre.
As things stand, today will be the acid test for the PM because this is his home state, his turf and anything less than the 115 seats his BJP party holds today in the assembly will be seen as a drop.
But Modi does have a knack of pulling a rabbit out of a hat and we saw that recently in the UP mayoral elections when the BJP ran way with the majority seats. The atmosphere was much the same. The media was projecting a lack of enthusiasm in the electorate but in the end they came and went against the projections.
The exit polls which have in recent years been totally off the wall and missing the target do give the BJP the edge but the window extends from less than ninety seats to as high as 145. Someone has to be right when you shoot a thousand arrows in the air. But the fact is the polls, polished by buzzwords and impressive acronyms, have no clue who will win today and by how much.
In Uttar Pradesh elections in March, no one predicted a BJP landslide of 325 seats out of 403, and almost all pollsters were over 100 seats behind in their most sunny assessments.
And even if you’re off your radar and are nowhere near the facts, you don’t have to apologise. You just act more profound and wipe the egg off your face. Add large doses of clever sounding phrases like “voter apathy”, “anti-incumbency” “proincumbency”, “youth impact” and “female turnout”, dress it up in technical finery, and no poll group is ever asked why they got things so horribly wrong in every election. It is a sobering thought that in 2014, nobody even came close to predicting the eclipse of the almighty Congress, which was left with a mere 44 seats in the House. Later on, after the dust settled, there was much pretence of how this collapse was on the cards.
In 2015, the JD(U)-RJD alliance made a mess of the pollsters in Bihar, when the alliance creamed the BJP and by a handsome majority though all exit polls predicted a BJP win.
As the trends roll in through the day the whole country will be watching closely for this is an acid test. For both.
If the Congress falters the progress made by Rahul as a leader will suffer and ruin his entry as the official torchbearer of the party. For Modi an emphatic victory will set the pace for the 2019 elections and mute his detractors.
In the unlikely event that the vote pattern gives the Congress an edge it will certainly place Modi on the backfoot and make his efforts at governance even harder. What it will also do is give the Congress a fuel injection at the exact time of the handing over from mother to son.