Thursday, May 22, 2014

Unpredictable Indian Voters

In 65 years of Indian democracy, Indians have exercised their adult franchise many a times yet their mood and sense to select a electoral representative for Lok Sabha and Assembly always seems to be far from reality and logical sense. They always seem to be fantasizing in the dream world to elect a macho person who would find the solution of their problem magically. They treat their representative to be a super hero as they have seen in the bollywood movies. Not surprisingly the result of the 2014 Lok sabha election has surpassed all poll predictions and given a clear mandate to the BJP and Mr. Narendra Modi.


There are few things which has been special in this elections are the large turn-out of voters to exercise their voting rights for electing the candidates, secondly the number of young voters formed the large chunk of electoral battle. The third and the major factor which led the NDA achieve this major hall mark of seats were the anger of the people because of the price rise, inflation, corruption, scams and un-responsive attitude of incumbent government towards the common people.

Apart from this, the mega marketing style of Mr. Narendra Modi which supposedly costed  5000 crores,  also created a great euphoria among the large section of the society that culminated into votes. Although, critiques does not endorsed all the poll promises of Mr. Modi or the BJP, it was the marketing style which influenced the individual voters to believe the promises to be really becoming true if Mr. Modi comes to power. When the election campaign of Mr. Modi started it had a lot to say about the development model of Gujarat and rescuing country from misdeeds of congress’s government but at the end of the campaign there were instances of wooing caste and religion too for the votes.

Now that the massive victory of BJP is out in the middle, it is very difficult to understand the mindset of the Indian voters. The poll pundits and analysts speculations have time and gain gone wrong in the recent past except  during Lok Sabha election of 1977, which was speculated to be clearly against the then Indira Gandhi Government. This time too there was a clear wave against congress yet the clear majority of BJP was not clearly written on the wall. As a result, all that has happened is quite surprising.

At a time when BJP is happy about this result and forming government in the center, its time for the opposition to understand as to how they could gear-up against the ruling party on the road ahead. Because in the coming assembly elections in few states the winning factor of BJP would definitely edge them over the opposition.  The real challenge is to be a strong opposition now to the ruling BJP in the center and be a strong contender of the assembly election in the states. Now, how the opposition look at their poll debacle in this concluded Lok Sabha election and introspect various mistakes they committed, will lead them to use their wisdom to look ahead fighting assembly elections.  

Assembly elections are largely fought on the basis of the local issues yet the policies of the center does play a greater role. Whether the coming assembly elections results would also be surprising or will it be on the line of BJP way is to be seen again. But the Indian voters would remain unpredictable for sure.