Being a citizen of the mother of democracy why am I so distraught? All the news about violations of the electoral process involves the ruling party or the government, almost none as perpetrated by the opposition. I think the ruling party is slowly losing its confidence as the phases have rolled out, indicated by the frequency of violations. I'm most confident that the last weapon, the most powerful one, to be employed by the party will be manipulating the counting and result declaration. I suspect that the number manipulation will be implemented on closely fought battles, and this would give the ruling party the biggest edge.
What I hear is that the people at the bottom of the barrel, those who have bore the brunt of the misadventures of the government, are coming together for a change. I don't know whether this will be sufficient enough for the rule of the law to return to the country.
It will be an utter defeat of faith, belief and prayer if Mr Modi gets less than 356 seats. India is a God fearing nation, it will never let Mr Modi down.
Due respect, sir, "god-fearing" people go to temples to practice their faith; elections are to decide the nature of governance, not an arena to prove one's faith. That said, take care, stay safe.
Wow! A lot of points covered; Lots of dots connected; Very well articulated
But I have sone 'buts' !
But No 1 : I am wondering what made USA praise Indian democracy and the election process, etc, and also 'thank PM Modi" for the friendship. They did that because in their view BJP is winning comfortably ? Os is than an eulogy of sort ?!
But No 2 : Has PM Modi reduced the fear-mongering / anti Muslim narrative because the initial apprehension of BJP not doing well in Phases 1 and 2 has been replaced with perceived better outcome in Phases 3 and 4 ? Also he is doing these 18000 'interviews' because he is confident that BJP is winning comfortably ?
1. In diplomacy, you don't bad mouth anyone unless you absolutely have to, and often not even then. As a diplomat, if you are asked "What do you make of Indian democracy?", you don't say "It sucks!". You trot out a word salad instead -- and leave it to your institutions to tell it like it is. Remember the various indices that keep coming out? The UNHRC refusing to certify India? All that.
2. He hasn't done anything of the kind. In his interviews he goes "Who, me?" and the very next day on the stump, he repeats what he denied saying. All he is doing is sowing enough confusion and getting the whole ecosystem to debate these u-turns -- and in the process forget about everything else that they should be remembering. And no, they haven't perceived anything in the third and fourth phase to get them to soft pedal. Amit Shah is running around today talking of ghuspetiyas, for the love of god.
3. He is doing these interviews at least in part to counter the allegation that he never does press conferences. He slipped in that bit in the previous interview -- I don't do pressers because the media is biased. Two, he does them to give TV something to run with every night -- one channel airs the interview, the others pull quotes and debate their meanings. That helps the media avoid covering what matters.
The BJP is losing... and increasingly, it is beginning to look like it is losing badly.
I think any prediction of elections of such a scale and complexity is bound to come with “buts.” If “scientific” polls can go horribly wrong, logically deduced predictions from limited data are even more prone to errors. All that we can do is to step back and ask if we are honest about ourselves.
I am certainly not yet convinced that the BJP is losing, let alone badly. There are so many variables about which we are purely speculating that it’s hard to be confident about the result. It’s only heartening that there is still a good fight out there despite the enormous skew in resources and blatant misuse of institutions.
Totally agree (not about the scientific polls bit because there aren't any now, but about the impossibility of predicting results of an election of this scale. The best you can do is think of all the inputs that you collect and that comes your way, come to conclusions, do your best to filter for bias... that's it. I could be entirely wrong, horribly so -- but I'll know that I read the game as best and as honestly as I could. That will do me.
Absolutely! One way (there are of course several ways, each of which is as good or bad as the other in terms of their validity) I was thinking one could indirectly test the hypothesis of the BJP losing is this: if this is likely, the propaganda media will have early information about it (how good an assumption is this?). At what stage, we can expect the signs of toning down their propaganda to protect themselves from the potential damage if the opposition comes to power? With polls for close to 430 seats being completed, there must be some sense of which way this is going must already be there among these guys but so far no sense that they are hedging their bets. So I wonder….
If that is a yardstick you are comfortable with, consider this: From the day polls were announced a staple of prime time programming has been panels of sundry pollsters all "discussing" the election and the chances for each party and group. Without exception, every pollster on every panel took as a given that while 400-paar was hyperbole, the BJP would by far exceed the 303 they had won the last time. The reasons they gave differed, but on this there was unanimity. And people drank it all in.
I remember getting a WA from a contact, who linked to one of the shows featuring Pradeep Gupta, where the other two pollsters on the panel were in ecstasies and Pradeep was supposed, according to my correspondent, to be reasonable. I listened, and realised that Pradeep was saying the same thing -- only, he kept saying yes, we are in the field, we are collecting numbers, but we cannot talk numbers right now because of the Model Code, so all I am willing to say is, there is no change either way from 2019. Rajdeep kept pressing for numbers, Pradeep kept playing coy -- and this was seen as an indication that Pradeep *knows*, he just can't quantify right now.
No one pushed back and pointed out that Pradeep's single biggest client -- official, on the books -- is the BJP.
Phase three, no change in the narrative. Phase four, ditto. And then suddenly, on the evening before phase five, Pradeep says "Look, what I can tell you now is that it is not a done deal, this is going down to the wire, and the question really is, can BJP hit 272".
Wow, wait, what happened to all those numbers he had collected? What happened between end of phase four and eve of phase five for "no change on the ground" to plummet to "will BJP breach 272?"
And, on the day of phase five, yesterday, the CSDS pollster echoes this and even says it is now certain the BJP won't touch 272, they might fall short by five or six seats. Again, huh? The CSDS lead was another of the pollsters totally confident that the Modi comeback, with the same or better numbers "not 400 paar, hahaha, that is just election jumla", was inevitable.
And this turnaround happens on a show anchored by Anjana Om Kashyap, who listens with a knowing smile and goes "So you are saying it is tight, right down to the wire..."
I am not hypothesising -- I am saying flat out that the media, TV in particular but also legacy print, had received word from on high to paint pictures in bright colours, and they all hewed the line. (Yaar, I am a journalist, have been one for over three decades -- I know people in legacy media, we talk -- off record).
So what changed? Two things. Media owners -- who know ground realities as well as anyone else -- are worried that if they keep pushing the prescribed narrative, they are in danger of losing the shreds of credibility they have, or think they have. And two, more importantly, ground realities are so evident now that they can't bring themselves to say the opposite with a straight face. (Video clips of sold out TV anchors being greeted with abuse and "go back slogans" are legion on the net).
So the toning down has already started. That said, if the opposition comes to power, there will be damage. The first is damage to credibility -- think of the viewers who have been force fed the Kool Aid, suddenly waking up and realising they have been fooled. Two -- the kind of access they enjoyed is going to go away. Not that the Opposition will stop meeting the press, but the cosy relationship of today changes significantly and that hurts. Third, media owners who sold themselves to the current regime are going to meet with suspicion and scepticism by the successors -- and that is crucial because the media needs the government more than ever to balance their bottom lines. (These frequent conclaves and summits that media hosts? The presence of the PM and Cabinet ministers is what pulls in tons of advertising revenue -- that, and also the government ads with Modi splashed all over them. Both will reduce drastically, and the owners will feel the shoe bite).
The media is not actually hedging its bets, so much as trying to ease into -- not a pivot exactly, because no one is going to say flat out that the BJP is losing -- but at least a marked toning down of the hosannas. Keep an eye on the pollsters heading into and immediately after phase six, and you will see what I mean.
Wow, fascinating backstories there! I also watched that interview with Pradeep Gupta with some interest, all that talk about "last over finish" (not from Pradeep but from the anchor) was quite a turnaround from even a few weeks back. However, I'll admit I'm not as confident as Prem but then I do not have much to go by except a miniscule number of non bhakt acquaintances who seem resigned to the idea of BJP coming back due to the tired, old trope of "no decent opposition"...I keep thinking while this "manufacturing of consent" works very well for the relatively affluent class the real question in a country like India is how long can Modi and co fool people who are struggling with galloping inflation and acute joblessness spouting nonsense about Muslims, Mutton, Machhli and all this BS. But then there's also the lurking shadow of the EC shenanigans with polling numbers and not all INDIA agents being very dilligent about form 17c...I'm not going to sleep well till June 4th and I only hope the nightmare will end then.
Being a citizen of the mother of democracy why am I so distraught? All the news about violations of the electoral process involves the ruling party or the government, almost none as perpetrated by the opposition. I think the ruling party is slowly losing its confidence as the phases have rolled out, indicated by the frequency of violations. I'm most confident that the last weapon, the most powerful one, to be employed by the party will be manipulating the counting and result declaration. I suspect that the number manipulation will be implemented on closely fought battles, and this would give the ruling party the biggest edge.
What I hear is that the people at the bottom of the barrel, those who have bore the brunt of the misadventures of the government, are coming together for a change. I don't know whether this will be sufficient enough for the rule of the law to return to the country.
It will be an utter defeat of faith, belief and prayer if Mr Modi gets less than 356 seats. India is a God fearing nation, it will never let Mr Modi down.
Due respect, sir, "god-fearing" people go to temples to practice their faith; elections are to decide the nature of governance, not an arena to prove one's faith. That said, take care, stay safe.
Wow! A lot of points covered; Lots of dots connected; Very well articulated
But I have sone 'buts' !
But No 1 : I am wondering what made USA praise Indian democracy and the election process, etc, and also 'thank PM Modi" for the friendship. They did that because in their view BJP is winning comfortably ? Os is than an eulogy of sort ?!
But No 2 : Has PM Modi reduced the fear-mongering / anti Muslim narrative because the initial apprehension of BJP not doing well in Phases 1 and 2 has been replaced with perceived better outcome in Phases 3 and 4 ? Also he is doing these 18000 'interviews' because he is confident that BJP is winning comfortably ?
1. In diplomacy, you don't bad mouth anyone unless you absolutely have to, and often not even then. As a diplomat, if you are asked "What do you make of Indian democracy?", you don't say "It sucks!". You trot out a word salad instead -- and leave it to your institutions to tell it like it is. Remember the various indices that keep coming out? The UNHRC refusing to certify India? All that.
2. He hasn't done anything of the kind. In his interviews he goes "Who, me?" and the very next day on the stump, he repeats what he denied saying. All he is doing is sowing enough confusion and getting the whole ecosystem to debate these u-turns -- and in the process forget about everything else that they should be remembering. And no, they haven't perceived anything in the third and fourth phase to get them to soft pedal. Amit Shah is running around today talking of ghuspetiyas, for the love of god.
3. He is doing these interviews at least in part to counter the allegation that he never does press conferences. He slipped in that bit in the previous interview -- I don't do pressers because the media is biased. Two, he does them to give TV something to run with every night -- one channel airs the interview, the others pull quotes and debate their meanings. That helps the media avoid covering what matters.
The BJP is losing... and increasingly, it is beginning to look like it is losing badly.
I think any prediction of elections of such a scale and complexity is bound to come with “buts.” If “scientific” polls can go horribly wrong, logically deduced predictions from limited data are even more prone to errors. All that we can do is to step back and ask if we are honest about ourselves.
I am certainly not yet convinced that the BJP is losing, let alone badly. There are so many variables about which we are purely speculating that it’s hard to be confident about the result. It’s only heartening that there is still a good fight out there despite the enormous skew in resources and blatant misuse of institutions.
Totally agree (not about the scientific polls bit because there aren't any now, but about the impossibility of predicting results of an election of this scale. The best you can do is think of all the inputs that you collect and that comes your way, come to conclusions, do your best to filter for bias... that's it. I could be entirely wrong, horribly so -- but I'll know that I read the game as best and as honestly as I could. That will do me.
Absolutely! One way (there are of course several ways, each of which is as good or bad as the other in terms of their validity) I was thinking one could indirectly test the hypothesis of the BJP losing is this: if this is likely, the propaganda media will have early information about it (how good an assumption is this?). At what stage, we can expect the signs of toning down their propaganda to protect themselves from the potential damage if the opposition comes to power? With polls for close to 430 seats being completed, there must be some sense of which way this is going must already be there among these guys but so far no sense that they are hedging their bets. So I wonder….
If that is a yardstick you are comfortable with, consider this: From the day polls were announced a staple of prime time programming has been panels of sundry pollsters all "discussing" the election and the chances for each party and group. Without exception, every pollster on every panel took as a given that while 400-paar was hyperbole, the BJP would by far exceed the 303 they had won the last time. The reasons they gave differed, but on this there was unanimity. And people drank it all in.
I remember getting a WA from a contact, who linked to one of the shows featuring Pradeep Gupta, where the other two pollsters on the panel were in ecstasies and Pradeep was supposed, according to my correspondent, to be reasonable. I listened, and realised that Pradeep was saying the same thing -- only, he kept saying yes, we are in the field, we are collecting numbers, but we cannot talk numbers right now because of the Model Code, so all I am willing to say is, there is no change either way from 2019. Rajdeep kept pressing for numbers, Pradeep kept playing coy -- and this was seen as an indication that Pradeep *knows*, he just can't quantify right now.
No one pushed back and pointed out that Pradeep's single biggest client -- official, on the books -- is the BJP.
Phase three, no change in the narrative. Phase four, ditto. And then suddenly, on the evening before phase five, Pradeep says "Look, what I can tell you now is that it is not a done deal, this is going down to the wire, and the question really is, can BJP hit 272".
Wow, wait, what happened to all those numbers he had collected? What happened between end of phase four and eve of phase five for "no change on the ground" to plummet to "will BJP breach 272?"
And, on the day of phase five, yesterday, the CSDS pollster echoes this and even says it is now certain the BJP won't touch 272, they might fall short by five or six seats. Again, huh? The CSDS lead was another of the pollsters totally confident that the Modi comeback, with the same or better numbers "not 400 paar, hahaha, that is just election jumla", was inevitable.
And this turnaround happens on a show anchored by Anjana Om Kashyap, who listens with a knowing smile and goes "So you are saying it is tight, right down to the wire..."
I am not hypothesising -- I am saying flat out that the media, TV in particular but also legacy print, had received word from on high to paint pictures in bright colours, and they all hewed the line. (Yaar, I am a journalist, have been one for over three decades -- I know people in legacy media, we talk -- off record).
So what changed? Two things. Media owners -- who know ground realities as well as anyone else -- are worried that if they keep pushing the prescribed narrative, they are in danger of losing the shreds of credibility they have, or think they have. And two, more importantly, ground realities are so evident now that they can't bring themselves to say the opposite with a straight face. (Video clips of sold out TV anchors being greeted with abuse and "go back slogans" are legion on the net).
So the toning down has already started. That said, if the opposition comes to power, there will be damage. The first is damage to credibility -- think of the viewers who have been force fed the Kool Aid, suddenly waking up and realising they have been fooled. Two -- the kind of access they enjoyed is going to go away. Not that the Opposition will stop meeting the press, but the cosy relationship of today changes significantly and that hurts. Third, media owners who sold themselves to the current regime are going to meet with suspicion and scepticism by the successors -- and that is crucial because the media needs the government more than ever to balance their bottom lines. (These frequent conclaves and summits that media hosts? The presence of the PM and Cabinet ministers is what pulls in tons of advertising revenue -- that, and also the government ads with Modi splashed all over them. Both will reduce drastically, and the owners will feel the shoe bite).
The media is not actually hedging its bets, so much as trying to ease into -- not a pivot exactly, because no one is going to say flat out that the BJP is losing -- but at least a marked toning down of the hosannas. Keep an eye on the pollsters heading into and immediately after phase six, and you will see what I mean.
Wow, fascinating backstories there! I also watched that interview with Pradeep Gupta with some interest, all that talk about "last over finish" (not from Pradeep but from the anchor) was quite a turnaround from even a few weeks back. However, I'll admit I'm not as confident as Prem but then I do not have much to go by except a miniscule number of non bhakt acquaintances who seem resigned to the idea of BJP coming back due to the tired, old trope of "no decent opposition"...I keep thinking while this "manufacturing of consent" works very well for the relatively affluent class the real question in a country like India is how long can Modi and co fool people who are struggling with galloping inflation and acute joblessness spouting nonsense about Muslims, Mutton, Machhli and all this BS. But then there's also the lurking shadow of the EC shenanigans with polling numbers and not all INDIA agents being very dilligent about form 17c...I'm not going to sleep well till June 4th and I only hope the nightmare will end then.