Elections in India

AMONG THE MORE disagreeable habits we seem to have inherited from our ancestors in ancient and medieval times is the perverse delight in tormenting the vanquished. India, as we well know, has more elections each year than what is good for it. And each election—at least most elections— produces a winner and a loser. Sometimes the losers pretend they are the real winners—as Congress did in 2024 when it doubled its tally—but more often they emerge from watching TV with hangdog expressions.

It is precisely at times when those who failed to make the grade warrant a gesture of sympathy or even a cup of tea—a very English response to a shock—the TV anchors pounce on them like a pack of hyenas. They are mocked, ridiculed and taunted. They are unendingly reminded of the lofty claims they had made of resounding victories that turned into conclusive defeats. As their faces display more and more signs of discomfort, the TV audiences behave like spectators in a bear-baiting fight. They love the cruelty inflicted on some poor animal whose fate was predetermined.

The outcome of the Bihar Assembly election was completely one-sided. The ruling NDA won so conclusively that even their own leaders and strategists were surprised. I am not even mentioning how ridiculous the pollsters looked, because like lawyers their compensation does not ever depend on the accuracy of their forecasts. The same ones who got it horribly wrong are guaranteed re-employment in the next round of elections. I once witnessed a pollster break down in tears because he got it so wrong. At least he was different from one pollster who fled the scene after it was clear that his forecast was not about what was likely to happen but what he wished would happen. That sanctimonious man has subsequently reinvented himself as a profound thinker.

My point is simple: we often get our sums wrong. Sometimes we deliberately see what we want to see and overlook everything else. At other times, our miscalculations arise from our earnest desire to see one side win or be roundly thrashed. Every now and then, we come across the media bore who will recall you with details of how many times he got his election forecasts right. Given the number of elections we witness in our lives, getting it right occasionally is not such a big deal.

Actually, it is interesting why the so-called pundits get it wrong. When I was a young and impressionable researcher in the mid-eighties, I compiled an account of how the landslide election of 1984 was covered in the print media—the only worthwhile media that was then in existence in India. Thanks to innumerable house moves over the decades, I have lost my copy of the study. However, if memory serves me well, nearly all the mainstream dailies forecast a tough fight with Congress enjoying an edge. In 1991, the same lot who drank cheap booze at the Press Club insisted that the Ram wave existed only in the towns, leaving village after village unmoved. In 2014, all manner of caste dissections were presented to show that Narendra Modi would at best secure an honourable mention from the voters. I know for a fact that the diplomatic circuit thought so because, as is its wont, it never spoke to anyone who didn’t know English.

The tragedy of this competitive betting syndrome is that the public conversation is now completely bereft of sophisticated and nuanced analysis. Even our public intellectuals are so fanatically against the Modi regime that they have convinced themselves—despite the spectacular lack of evidence, even anecdotal—that the Bihar election, and before that the Maharashtra and Haryana elections, were stolen from the voters by the Election Commission. Now that such fantastic conspiracy theories that resemble the fascinating Soviet disappearing ink theory that Balraj Madhok trotted out after Indira Gandhi’s 1971 victory are the order of the day, it is more than likely that people will turn to astrology to comprehend what is happening around them.

Personally, I don’t have too much time for the jyotishis, but over the last two weeks my friends who look to the stars for guidance have assured me that the April 2026 Assembly election will be Mamata Banerjee’s last encounter with electoral politics. Does this mean her party will lose to my side? Alternatively, does it imply she will hand over the baton to a designated successor after yet another triumph? Such uncertainties are tantalising.