The writer is a journalist with Scroll.in in Delhi. He is a Multani from Lucknow who finds himself trapped in the Republic of South Delhi. He tweets @DilliDurAst
By the time you read this, the results of the Indian elections would at best be a few hours away. Who will win? Will Modi be home easily or will he need allies? Will the results show a Modi wave or will the wave prove to have been a bubble? All the pundits and punters, astrologers calling themselves psephologists and entertainers calling themselves TV journalists have made their predictions and guesstimates. So here's my prediction: I don't know.
It's so hard for people to say they don't know. Everyone is expected to know the future beforehand. If you travel in a train everybody knows everything about the train: its stops, technology, arrival time. If you ask people in Delhi for directions, they will never say they don't know. They will think a little, as though summoning the answer from the GPS devices installed in their subconscious and then tell you to go straight. Another few metres later ask another person and s/he will also ask you to go straight. You will soon realise that you are going around in circles. “Bhaiyya yeh C-35 Defence Colony kaha padega?” “Aagaey”. After going around in circles for days, you will learn that anyone who pauses to think for even a second, actually doesn't know the way. Why, then, is he misleading you? He's misleading you because it would be too embarrassing to admit he doesn't know. It would be like admitting he's not a man. By asking him for directions you have challenged his very being, his manhood, his humanity even.
When you have mastered the art of telling the fake direction givers from the real one, you have become a Dilliwala. You have owned the city.
Has Narendra Modi been given the right directions? Has he been going around in circles or has he been taking us around in circles? Did the Modi ‘wave’ really turn into a ‘tsunami’ or did it fizzle away like the fizz in my Coca Cola?
Perhaps, he doesn't himself know, even though his party and the media are taking seriously the obscenely good ‘exit poll’ results. These are just some of the things I don't understand about the human condition. Why do we need ‘exit polls’ when the real results are just four days away? How do ‘exit polls’ results help democracy or journalism? The exit polls were wrong in 2004 and 2009 too. Why, then, do they still do exit polls? To give the stock markets a false high? As Shobhaa De once said, the Bombay Sensex has neither sense nor sex. It's true of TV news too.
The multi-cornered contest in most of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Seemandhra and Telangana has been so close that the difference of every one per cent vote share can make a large difference in the number of seats. The result could be anything. Narendra Modi could be prime minister on Monday or he may take three weeks to gather the numbers, or a completely unexpected name we don't yet know the spelling of could become a ‘Third Front’ prime minister by mid-June. At any rate, Delhi's who's who will have to postpone their annual month-long holiday to London from the usual June to July. Rahul Gandhi has already made a short trip, missing Dr Manmohan Singh's farewell dinner. Why should a feudal lord care about his servant's retirement?
I have no guesstimates or predictions. But amongst other strange thing about the human condition are dreams. My dreams never come true. It is said that a dream you see in the morning always comes true. However, I'm such an insomniac that my mornings are sometimes my nights. So, this may mean nothing. But given that reality is full of nonsense, I'm sure you want to know my dream. I dreamt three weeks ago that the Bhartiya Janata Party won only 160-something seats, as opposed to the 200 they need to win to start making an alliance, leave alone the 272 that some exit polls think they will win on their own along with the pre-poll alliance partners.
No matter what the result, we'll heave a sigh of relief that this endless election is over. We've been waiting for this day for at least two years. Dr Singh's government went into a limbo. Nobody asked him to resign and he asked himself, sannu ki? Servants serve until the masters please. National interest is interesting only if it's in your interest.
The joke is that Narendra Modi has already been India's prime minister for a year and now he's facing anti-incumbency. If he wins, I will play Iqbal Bano's Hum Dekhenge and if he loses I will recount the story that led Nizamuddin Auliya to say “Hunooz, Dilli dur ast”.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 16th, 2014.
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COMMENTS (24)
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@gp65: Thanks for the response....congratulations on the huge win.......go easy on the champagne.
"I dreamt three weeks ago that the Bhartiya Janata Party won only 160-something seats, as opposed to the 200 they need to win to start making an alliance, leave alone the 272 that some exit polls think they will win on their own along with the pre-poll alliance Ha-ha!....... now you can wake up with the nightmare that he has won 283! more nightmares?".........
@Parvez: "the perception that he is riding on the coat-tails of big business, will cause apprehension in the minds of the poor "
This was definitely a perception that Congress and AAP tried to create, If however they had succeeded, NDA would not have been voted with such a humungous majority in UP and Bihar who are the poorest states. In fact Modi did especially well in these states because poor migrants from these states who went to Gujarat saw peace( no riots not even a curfew in 12 years), 24x7 hour electricity, god irrigation (in a state which prior to Modi would have drought in 7 out of 10 years) and great farm to market roads - and went back and told their friends and family what they saw.
"plus fanning the wind of communalism as an election vote getting strategy, has the possibility of backfiring"
Fannning winds of communalism is unacceptable to me as a strategy and I at least could not support someone who I felt was doing that. Yes there were a couple of people in BJP who tried to go that route (e.g. Giriraj) but the party and Modi disowned those statements unambiguously. Most of Modi's electoral speeches are availble in public domain and one cannot find any inflammatory statement having come from either Modi or any senior BJP leaders. In fact except for a small percentage of speeches where he was exchanging barbs with people who atacked him - 95% of his speech content was focused on development. So while he has been accused of fanning flames of communalism by Congress as an electoral strategy - there is no evidence that he actually did so.
Today did you smell coffee?
@Gp65: Modi's track record as an administrator is average to good.........but now he has to deal with a giant bureaucracy and the perception that he is riding on the coat-tails of big business, will cause apprehension in the minds of the poor ( of which there are many ) plus fanning the wind of communalism as an election vote getting strategy, has the possibility of backfiring..........BUT you have rightly said that he's a self made person and apparently, up to now, an honest person. I have always maintained that one smart, honest person is all it takes to do the right thing......so now let's see.
@GP65, we know you are Modiaite, with absolute majority any body can rule, it is with difficulties, leader ship quality is seen. All the modi was in absolute majority and arrogant, so he did not even entertain lokayuktha and RTI files were hitting dust. Only business files of favour able business men were moving at top speed, so don't tell us about riot free, 24x7 elec etc., we know how it could be done.. riot free, because zero justice for victims (both hindus and muslims) hindu former home minister who was against modi was killed, hindu bahen was cabinet minister even when every body knew she supplied weapons from her car for riots, she was convicted without support from govt.
24x7 elect, with Rs. 5.25 per unit, we pay 2.5 per unit in bangalore,but not 24x7 in some areas. who is burdened, govt/rich/business men or Poor????
ET mods - everything is factual and directly related to the content of the OpEd. pls. Publish.
You may say you do not know and that is fine. However when you imoly no one CAN know, then you have been proven wrong. Chanakya exit polls had predicted 340 plus minus 14 for NDA, 290 plus or minus 14 for BJP, Congress as 57 plus or minus 9 seats, UPA 70 plus or minus 9 seats. Not just that even at state level it had got things remarkably correct. It had said NDA would get 63 to 70 seats in UP, 28 seats in Bihar. Despite the Modi wave it had correctly predicted Mamata and Naveen Patnaik would do exceedingly well in West Bengal and Odisha but that BJP would do almost as well as Congress in West Bengal.
They had also done a remarkable job in Delhi state elections where they were the only one who had predicted such a large number of seats for AAP.
So perhaps you should review your cynicism about opinion polls. Yes, people may have got it wrong in the past but as methodology is refined, remarkably accurate predictions are indeed possible.
@Gp65: You see he is leading in 241 constituencies ...figures of 300 for BJP very much in sight! Anyways fear of weak government is very much over Congrats in advance.
That the butcher of Gujarat will be elected is definitely not same old Parvez. The likes of gp65 will continue their propaganda for this hardcore Hindu nationalist because she herself is an ultra right winger, though she tries to appear as a secular-modernist when commenting on Pakistan. And the communal wolf in development clothing as PM will be the worst thing to have happened to this region.
If we don't need exit polls, then why do we need this article?
@Framjeet Bombaywala: in seats with A high percentage of Muslims, NDA appears ahead in 79% . The politics of fear seems to have not worked. The riot free performance over 12 years, 24x7 electricity which us an issue matters to people if all religions. This had already been seen in municipal elections in Gujarat where BJP won in Muslim majority areas.
@sabi: Even Modi was not asking for 300 for BJP. But rather for NDA which is the coalition.
@Parvez: not same old. This is the first time in 30 years - after 1984 that a pre-poll alliance has got such a strong mandate. The fact that a man whose mother used to wash vessels in neighbours' home and who himself sold tea as a kid has been elected as a PM. This is not same - old.
@hehe: We will come to know in a few hours is there was any "rise" for AAP at all. As you must be aware, exit polls have predicted Kejriwal at number 3 in Varanasi with around 10% vote share but why bother when the real thing will be out soon.
I would have voted for AAP and for me the fact that Kejriwal quit in 49 days is not as much as a problem as how Delhi was run during those 49 days.
Well - Vij is open about dreaming of NDA/Modi's losses...but, all the noise about Modi's victory has him unnerved. He's positioning himself to be able to say, yup I knew Modi would win, if the results are in line with the exit polling. But, if the exit polls are wrong and Modi loses, then he can say his dreams came true.
Looking at the larger picture....it matters not who the ring master is because the circus is the same.....and the show will go on.
Let me guess (I don't know as well) BJP will get around 300 seats.
Modi's ascent to the post of the Prime Minister is foregone conclusion at this stage. Pakistan's establishment has already made a move on the chessboard in letting the Indian establishment know that relations will be rocky with the expulsion of the two Indian journalists from Pakistan. Modi will have to do a balancing act between appeasing his core supporters in the Sangh Parivar and the wishes of the other regional player now embedded in Afghanistan, and not to heat up tensions with Pakistan. Hum Dekhenge
Now, this is what can be called a fair assumption.
This Multani shed his anger! I loved him more when he was gussewala.
Excellent article. Looks like the butcher won. Let the Hindustani trolls descend. All 1.9 billion of them.
@sabi: IF the jingoists expect, Modi to treat Muslims unfairly, they will be disappointed. Under him Gujarat was free from cmunal rits fo 12 years - the longest in recent history. Poverty rate of Muslims is lower than poverty rate of Hindus in Gujarat and Muslims nationally. HE says that for any one in government the only holy book is the constitution. When he was attacked in a Patna rally - did he use that occassion to polarise votes by attacking Muslims? No. HE said : Hinduon ko ye tay karna hoga ke woh Mussalmano se ladna chahte hain ya garibi se or Mussalmano ko bhi ye tay karna hoga ke woh Hinduon se ladna chahte hain ya garibi se'.
Of course haters will hate and that cannt be stopped.
Pseudo-secular writing has become like Govinda - David Dhawan movies from the 90s - leave your brains outside and you can have a good laugh for a while.
Fantastic explanation.
Jingoists on this side of the border are praying for Modi's success and we all know why.