The message in the polls

But voters should know the implications of an unshackled BJP

Most people, when they look at the opinion polls that have been done in the run-up to the general elections, tend to focus on the forecasts of which party will get how many seats. It is more instructive to look at the voting percentages being claimed by the pollsters. First, the upswing in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) vote is massive, even unprecedented - from 18 per cent in 2009 to around 34 per cent in the latest polls. Second, the Congress has not taken a big beating, of the kind that would reflect the level of disenchantment usually expressed in middle-class and business circles about the outgoing government; the party's share of the vote is seen dropping from 28 per cent in 2009 to about 25 per cent. The surge in the BJP vote, therefore, has come principally at the cost of the smaller parties. This is a slightly different narrative from the one usually articulated on the TV shows.

The apparent trends over the past seven months have their own story to tell. In or around September 2013, the vote shares of the Congress and the BJP were about equal. Then a gap opened up, and widened. That suggests the BJP has run a more convincing campaign than the Congress. Given the nature of the campaign, it also is more or less certain that the BJP's vote surge is on account of Narendra Modi. All the early punditry that Mr Modi would be a negative for the party has turned out to be completely off the mark.

The Congress' decline in vote share during the last six to seven months could be a reflection of inchoate disenchantment with the Manmohan Singh government crystalising in the wake of Mr Modi's campaign. But that begs the question: if the Congress had marketed its government's successes as skillfully as Mr Modi has his in Gujarat, would it have made a difference? It is now too late to find out. What is clear is that disowning its own government and marketing Rahul Gandhi as a new leader with new ideas has not worked; Mr Gandhi is simply not a convincing figure. Such are the perils of royalism.

And what about the seat count? It is worth noting that the Congress in 2009 got more than 200 seats with 28 per cent of the vote and a 10-percentage-point vote lead over the BJP. Against this background and given the vote-seat conversion factor in earlier elections, it is inconceivable that the BJP will now get only 210 seats or thereabouts, even with 34 per cent of the vote and no other party getting more than 25 per cent. If the vote shares are correct, then the pollsters are giving the BJP too few seats. Along with its allies in the National Democratic Alliance, it should be heading for a near-majority or even better.

One point remains to be made. A leader's skill lies in getting his followers to project their hopes and desires onto him, and in becoming a vehicle for the expression of their discontents. In this, Mr Modi has been supremely successful, even as he has skillfully projected a part of his own track record and pushed the unsavoury bits into the background. He has thus emerged as a magnetic politician who now stands taller than anyone else on India's political stage. But voters would be well advised to be clear-headed about what they are voting for. After Manoj Mitta's book on the Gujarat riots and the subsequent subversion of justice, after Cobrapost has caught leading Sangh Parivar activists talking about how they brought down the Babri Masjid, no one should have the excuse of saying later that they did not know. Indeed, in a not untypical twist of logic, the BJP thinks it is the expose that is inflammatory, and the whole thing a Congress plot - though it is the BJP's own who are incriminating themselves on tape. Whatever improvements Mr Modi may or may not be able to bring about in how the country is ruled (and one must hope the improvements are substantial), be prepared for plenty of high-decibel doublespeak in the months to come as an unshackled BJP pushes its agenda.