Chronicle of a Victory Foretold

CAMPAIGNS CONFIRM OUTCOMES; they do not create them. People make up their minds, exceptions apart, about six months before they vote. The swivel which converts indifference or uncertainty into a decision emerges from the lived experience of five years, not a turn of phrase. If this is supplemented by a leader’s charisma then numbers jump rather than rise, but victory in a democracy is, to paraphrase a well-known saying, 99 per cent perspiration and 1 per cent inspiration. It is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s relentless rigour on each working day, and the massive investment he has made in the welfare of people who do not read English newspapers, which have placed him at the forefront of the 2024 General Election.

This election hinges on the W-Factor: the support of Women is key to a Win. If a slogan serves better than sentences, then the one that captures the mood of the moment is, in Hindi: Rashan aur Sashan. Rations and Rule. Bhashan takes third place. Speeches make a point but only if they are backed by good governance from the establishment or, in the case of the opposition, a realistic alternative policy programme.

The economic and social emancipation of women is the core of Prime Minister Modi’s Garib Kalyan movement. Women beneficiaries of the free-rations scheme begun during the Covid crisis are saying thank you to him. Women get the gas subsidy in their bank accounts; they have been empowered by 50 per cent ownership of government housing; they have got bank loans into their personal accounts. The voting percentage of women will tell you more about this election than any psephologist. Statistics from the first two phases show that women have voted in equal numbers to men. Two states had a variation. In West Bengal women were higher than men by 2 to 3 per cent; and in Maharashtra they dipped by about 2 per cent. In other states the graph was similar.

The test of a government lies in its policies, not in its spokespersons. Every voter will not press the button for Narendra Modi. But there is not a single person in India who can claim, even from the wildest anti-government platform, that a single family from the minorities or from any anti-establishment political persuasion, has been denied rations, or health insurance, or gas subsidy, or homes. That is the only true evidence of government being equally beneficial to every Indian.

In large swathes of Indian society, the man earns money and the wife-mother feeds the home. For the first time in known history, the tension of providing enough food to stave off hunger has dissipated. It is only human for the woman from an economically depressed background not to be grateful to the benefactor. In case after case, women who are voting for the prime minister have given ‘security’ as their prime reason. Physical security is not their only worry; food security has equal premium. Rashan, Sashan and Bhavishya are their triangular zone of comfort.

When this General Election began, the most widely read newspaper in the country listed 10 factors which, it believed, would determine the result. At the top was Ram Mandir. The construction of a beautiful temple to Lord Ram is undoubtedly important to majority sentiment, but this is the fulfilment of a promise made three decades ago. This election will be determined by how much Modi has done for the poor in the last five years, and the optimism he can generate in all Indians about the future. The harvest of the first term was delivered in 2019.

A third term is considered so difficult in democratic politics that many systems, like the American and French, simply do not allow it. Narendra Modi faces a challenge, but he has no serious challenger. Rahul Gandhi is far from being anywhere close to a potential alternative. At best he is a hopeful who has slipped into personal and political middle age with an economic recipe from the 1950s for the problems of the 2020s. He is half-a-century out-of-date. Ill health has become a burden on the mien of a heavyweight like Sharad Pawar.

In the first phase of this election, the government’s critics raised their hopes from the drop in turnout. But there is no pattern to justify this. Voting percentages went up in 1962 when Congress had little opposition, and in 1967, when it had a lot. In 1971, the turnout was 55.27 per cent, showing a sharp 5.8 per cent drop even as Indira Gandhi swept to a glorious victory with a handsome majority of 352 seats. It rose by 5.2 per cent when Congress was trounced in 1977; and went down by 3.6 per cent when Janata was demolished in 1980. There is no consistent correlation between percentages and results. The voting percentage was virtually the same in 1999, 2004 and 2009. Narendra Modi energised the electorate in 2014, increasing the number to 66.44 per cent, and then again in 2019. In 2024, the final figure could settle around 65 per cent.

The question is: Whose vote stayed at home, and whose came to the booth? To answer that, let us turn to my friend Jawid Laiq.

Jawid Laiq and his wife Bharati Bhargava, both former assistant editors of the leftwing Economic and Political Weekly, have probably never voted for BJP, although I have never asked. Since 1977, Jawid has been conducting an extremely interesting one-man poll of electoral behaviour. He goes to Prayagraj, hires a boat, and talks to the boatmen and pilgrims. In 1977 they told him, albeit with much hesitation, that the all-powerful Indira Gandhi would lose. He could barely believe it. Then the results came in. He has gone to the iconic holy river during every General Election thereafter and the boatmen have always been right. They told him that Atal Bihari Vajpayee would lose in 2004, Manmohan Singh would be re-elected in 2009, Narendra Modi would win in 2014, and get an enhanced majority in 2019. This year it was a two-person poll. Jawid went with Bharati to the pilgrims and boatmen in Prayagraj. In simple, sparse and objective language they have, in a published article, narrated their encounters with Jiban Das, 35, from Agartala; Parikshit, 42, from Bhuj in Gujarat; Mirabhai Khandekar, 65, “a gentle housewife” from Bhadrawati, Maharashtra; Kalu Ram, 60, a farmer from Udaipur; Rajesh, 28, a driver from Churu in Rajasthan; Preeti Prajapathi, 34, from Bhahruch in Gujarat; Vandana Muktekar, 52, a schoolteacher from Bhilai; Kamalapati Agnihotri, 57, a railway goods supervisor from Lalitpur in Bundelkhand; Uttam Sinha, 35, a railway goods employee from Dumka, Jharkhand; Munna Ram, 45, a driver from Jodhpur; Hukumchand Sharma, 56, a travel agent from Dausa in Rajasthan; Hira Ramnath, 63, a small farmer from Raigad in Maharashtra; Ankita Tiwari, 36, owner of a medical shop in Ratlam, Madhya Pradesh; Manju Singh, 50, who runs an online business in Kota, Rajasthan; Ranga Rao, 43, a businessman in West Godavari, Andhra Pradesh; Kalpana, 45, a housewife from Haveri, Karnataka; Niranjan, 40, from Hyderabad; Vinatha, 51, from Nalgonda; Vasantha, 60, from Nizamabad; and Prem Narayan Tiwari, who lives in an unusual village in Uttar Pradesh peopled only by Brahmins.

They had all voted for Narendra Modi, apart from Rao who marked his ballot for the prime minister’s ally Chandrababu Naidu and predicted that their alliance would get 80 per cent of the seats in Andhra. There were two exceptions. Gopal Vishnoi, 50, of Bikaner had voted for Congress. And Manju Devi, 30, daughter-in-law of a washerwoman, was disgusted by every party but was inclined towards Mayawati’s BSP. Sticklers will point out that this is not a scientific sample; that there is no one from the minorities, or states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, or Bengal. But this survey was equally arbitrary in each previous General Election.

ONE OF THE miracles of Indian parliamentary democracy is its inherent ability to build checks and balances. It never gave Congress a trampling majority when there was no realistic opposition in the 1950s. In 1952, Congress won 364 seats in a House of 489 with 44.99 per cent of the vote. That means: 55 per cent of Indian voters rejected the party that had wrested freedom from the British just five years before. Who can ever question the balance and wisdom of the Indian voter? The communists won 16 seats and the self-explanatory Tamil Nadu Toilers Party four in the first General Election.

In 1957, the Congress vote increased to 47.78 per cent but its seats went down by three. In 1962, the ruling party lost 10 seats; while 1967 opened up the possibility of real change when Congress collapsed to 283 out of 523 seats. Even at the height of Congress power, other parties had between 125 and 250 seats in Lok Sabha.

Our electoral system finds unique ways of giving representation to every serious strand of opinion, as should be. The game of numbers is only settled when all the numbers are in. As Winston Churchill remarked on November 11, 1947: “Many forms of government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all other forms that have been tried from time to time…” The date is relevant. Just two years before, in 1945, Churchill was trounced in a general election within weeks of leading Britain to its greatest military triumph, victory in World War II.

In 2004, the vast horde of India’s political onlookers got their first whiff of a shift in the environment from a blast in Mumbai. About three weeks before the results, the stock market began to plunge. It was the first hint that the NDA government was in trouble; the markets remained in turmoil till Manmohan Singh was able to form a government. The moneymen of Mumbai put their money where their mouth is. It makes sense to listen even if you do not want to believe them. They are in charge of too many thousands of crores. They do not invest in lottery games. After the sixth phase of elections on May 25, the market was buoyant, scaling the 76000 mark for the first time the following Monday. By Monday evening, investors were booking profits since money survives only when it reduces risk. That is rational. The market’s message is cautious: the establishment will be back, but we do not yet know by how much of a majority. As Rajesh Bhatia, CIO of ITI Mutual Funds, told Moneycontrol on May 28: “Currently, market sentiment is very positive, anticipating the same government to return to power, ensuring policy continuity.”

These are objective observations. They indicate which genie will emerge from the ballot machines on June 4. For further details, see the next issue of your favourite magazine, Open.

The result of one election has already been declared. India has won in Jammu & Kashmir, where the polling percentage rose to 58.5 per cent, the highest turnout in 35 years.

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