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Lookout world - India just went from yesterday to tomorrow and skipped today all together

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ANI New Delhi

For those who followed India's historic elections this year, you know that the drubbing that the then ruling Congress (fronting the United Progressing Alliance or NDA for short) took and the victory of the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) heralds a new era in Indian politics.

It set new precedents on many levels and indicates a fundamental shift in the capability of the Indian public.

This election gives India the first non-coalition government in thirty years (transition issues in the past aside), the most punishing defeat to the Congress party ever, and an overarching failure of a majority of caste-based parties across the nation.

 

Consider the example of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in Tamil Nadu that went from 18 seats to zero (yup... a total wipeout) and that of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) of Uttar Pradesh that lost all 21 of its seats.

These are parties that have succeeded purely on the basis of caste politics and voter polarization. Parties that have relied heavily on blaming other caste groups for the miseries of those they represent (Remember the time during the 2G scam when the DMK supremo defended A. Raja by stating that he was being targeted since he was a Dalit i.e. lower caste).

Add to this, the bitter losses of the Samajwadi Party (SP), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) and the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), all big caste based parties and a pattern starts to emerge.

In contrast, consider the wins of regional parties that don't build themselves up on a caste platform. The AIADMK in Tamil Nadu and the AITMC in West Bengal, despite being single state parties, are now the third and fourth largest parties in the parliament. They have done exceedingly well with the AIADMK winning 37 of 39 seats and AITMC winning 34 of 42 seats (in comparison Congress won a grand total of 44 seats among the 462 that it contested from across the nation).

Besides the notable performances of the parties mentioned above, another interesting outcome was the fact that almost every pollster got the outcomes wrong by a mile. They all predicted a BJP win but were nowhere in the range of the actual results (All but Chanakya of course... who got closest to the actual outcome) .

Chanakya excluded, not one polling agency predicted anything beyond 290 (a whopping 46 seats away from the actual count of 336) seats for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and not one predicted anything lesser than 97 seats for the UPA (they landed at 58 by the way).Another major media misfire post the Delhi 2013 polls where a lot of agencies had never even considered the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to be a legitimate candidate in an election that ended with them becoming the ruling party.

Before, we move any further with this article and start singling out the pattern, I thought that we should partake in a visual journey through some of these numbers.

The Polls in context

2-May-14 CNN-IBN - CSDS - Lokniti 276 (NDA) 97 (UPA) 148 (Other)

12-May-14 India Today - Cicero 272 (NDA) 115(UPA) 156 (Other)

12-May-14 Times Now - ORG 249 (NDA) 148(UPA) 146 (Other)

12-May-14 ABP News - Nielsen 274 (NDA) 97(UPA) 165 (Other)

12-May-14 India TV - CVoter 289 (NDA) 101(UPA) 148 (Other)

14-May-14 NDTV - Hansa Research 279 (NDA) 103 (UPA) 161 (Other)

12-May-14 News 24 - Chanakya 340 (NDA) 70 (UPA) 133 (Other)

12-May-14 Poll of Polls 283 (NDA) 05(UPA) 149 (Other)ctual Results 336 (NDA)

58(UPA) 149 (Other)

How wrong were the pollsters. While the polsters got the national sentiment right, they all overestimated the power of the Congress. The polling biases assumed that a lot of Indians would continue to vote for parties that they were familiar with and did not account for the fact that Indians were moving past historical biases.

Agreed, the margin for NDA predictions were not greatly off but for UPA....boy did the results take our pundits into a tailspin. A party from the state of Tamil Nadu was only seven seats behind the Congress and therein lies the magnitude of misjudgement.

Caste based parties went from 165 seats in 2014 to 27 seats this year. A whopping 84 per cent drop in ten years and a 76 per cent drop from 115 seats in 2009. The sum total of seats won by these eight parties puts them behind the AITMC of West Bengal which is not even a national party. Both the BSP and the DMK have been wiped out with zero sears each. A drop from 39 seats they held between them in 2009.

Consider the case of RJD going from 24 seats in 2004 to four seats this time but in their case, the decline had already hit in 2009. The RJD relies on a base of Yadavs and Muslims voters, both large segments of Bihar's population. These elections, several media outlets and even the BJP feared a resurgent Laloo wave on the back of sympathy and religion/ caste based loyalty from his traditional vote bank. So wrong were they that both his eldest daughter Misa Bharti and his wife Rabri Devi lost the elections this time.

Similar was the situation of Janata Dal (United) and the pro-reservation Sharad Yadav. This elections, in an attempt to expand his vote bank, he went to seek the blessings of convicted politician Anand Mohan's (who is is serving a life term for the murder of Gopalganj DM G Krishnaiah) mother Geeta Devi at her native village, allegedly to capitalize on the Rajput vote bank. This too was a disaster with the party going from 20 seats in 2009 to a tiny 2 seats.

Of course, there are others who never learn circa Mayawati who that claimed "communal polarisation" in Uttar Pradesh made most of the Muslims side with the Samajwadi Party and most of the upper castes and OBCs with the BJP in order to justify the BSP's wipeout. Similarly the Samajwati party also bombed despite their aggressive wooing of the muslim vote bank and reaching the level where leaders like Abu Azmi made statements such as "If any Muslim opposes the Samajwadi Party, have a DNA test done, he could be an RSS man. Muslims who don't vote for the SP are not true Muslims."

CPI(M) is the one story that is different where the issue is just bad governance. Remember that this is the same party whose own veteran leader and many time West Bengal finance ministers Dr. Ashok Mitra, stated that "the CPI(M) leadership is blind of hubris and the party has turned into a wide open field of flatterers and court jesters dominated by 'anti-socials'". This is a party known for the Nandigram and Singur episodes and they are still paying the price for their mismanagement of West Bengal for over three decades.

Besides the parties mentioned above, the others barely managed to keep open accounts as indicated . A quick anecdotal series of discussions with chaiwallas, my domestic help and taxi drivers helped me begin to understand why because they all knew their politics and they all had their priorities straight.

They were bothered about inflation, poor roads, corruption and the overall slowdown in the economy. They wanted their children to do well but some of them actually said that they would rather have an economic quota than a caste quota as it caused resentment among their children's classmates. They wanted better access to banks and savings accounts, gas pipelines, longer hours of water, lesser power cuts, better roads and improved medical care. They cared very little for the religion or the caste that their leaders represented.

My conversations and the numbers that I see here indicate that this was not the defeat of these parties but is actually the triumph of the people and their voices. Common sense seems to be prevailing over ideological positions and the elections are a resounding acknowledgement of the same.

Let us now try and understand the secret behind the success of the three biggest winners these elections (besides the Obvious BJP) who are both regional parties

The AIADMK has won thanks to the fact that it did NOT underestimate the intelligence of the empowered 2014 voter. When she came to power this time around in 2011, Tamil Nadu was a state struggling with massive power shortages, Staggering Inflationary pressures, labour shortages, and a slowdown in infrastructure development.

First she rolled out the Amma Canteens that wnet against every ineffective populist dole measure initiated before. Subsidized value added food for every one every where via restaurant format service centers (unlike food grains in via a corruption driven system). Next she launched mineral water bottles at ten rupees a litre and started launching fair price vegetable shops (again aimed at everyone) across the state.

Simultaneously, she delivered on fixing the power shortage issue with the state slowly going from a deep red towards a delicate green. Her opposition was in shambles and she drove the dagger home with the rapid succession of populist but effective schemes. Finally, during her campaigning, she focussed on uniting the tamil people towards the common goal of giving Tamil Nadu a strong say in Central affairs had the NDA not gotten a clean majority. Again a win for common sense.

The second case is that of the Bengal Tigress 'Didi' Mamta who won for completely different reasons. While she does not score the development points of 'Amma', she stands against everything that the Left Front that ruled West Bengal stands for. This is still a state suffering from picking the better of two evils and Mamata is currently the only real choice for the voters against a dying Left Front legacy. A choice determined by common sense and not ideological hangovers.

Finally, we consider the case of Naveen Patnaik and the BJD of Odisha. The BJD has grown from strength to strength and closed these elactions with a record 20 of the 21 Lok Sabha seats in Odisha. The BJD is established as a strongly secular party and much of its popularity and success comes from Patnaik's clean and development centric image. This is the same man was felicitated by the United Nations for his effort to evacuate nearly a million people ahead of Cyclone Phailin making landfall in 2013.

Is there a theme here you ask? Absolutely.... an almost beautiful evolution of the Indian public is underway and I haven't even gotten to it yet.

People are getting smarter faster and more effectively than they ever did...and we are still in the dark about this radical empowerment of the populace. We assume that development is linear and it usually is, but every so often... breakthroughs happen and they change the game. Think of Luis Pasteur and his breakthrough germ theory.

His first recommendation was that surgeons wash their hands and till today, millions of lives are still saved thanks to such a simple breakthrough. The printing press, the first assembly line, the first phone, mobile phones, the internet... all tools of exponential development and they are all anchored on empowerment.

I decided to do a quick analysis of this empowerment by comparing Literacy rates against social media registrations amongst Indians and the results blew me away.

Predictions about the Indian mindset started to go wrong around 2009 when the internet started to pick up steam but things started to really accelerate around 2011 when the total internet users surpassed the number of middle school pass outs in the country. By 2013, the number of internet users have surpassed the total number of primary school pass outs by so much that there are over 50 million Indians who never finished class five but use the internet today.

The number of active Internet and face book users have already surpassed the number of people who have passed the 10th. There are nearly twice as many internet users as there are middle school pass outs. These middle school pass outs are soon to be outnumbered by the number of Indian facebook users and this could happen as early as the next few months.

These numbers matter because they are starting to show us an interesting and irreversible reality.... Education may be linear... but knowledge can be exponential. More Indians are knowledgeable about the state of affairs than ever before and around 20 million Indians are being added to that number every year. These are the Indians who ask the tough questions because they know where and how to look for answers. These are the Indians who are putting an immense positive pressure on the democratic process and leading to the rise of development focussed agendas. These are the Indians of tomorrow...today.

I decided do some additional research to see if there was more evidence to support my hypothesis and it just so happens that there is really solid evidence in fact. Here are a few of the highlights listed down below

1.India's average internet connection speed went from below 800 Kbps in mid 2011 to nearly double that late 2013.

2.Over 80 million (probably closer to a 100 million now) Indians use smart phones. In the first quarter of 2014 alone, vendors in India shipped a total of 17.59 million units.

3.Over 120 million Indian gmail accounts exist today. Atleast 80 million are active

4.Narendra Modi had more than 16 million "likes" on Facebook by the time that he was sworn in as prime minister, the second most for any politician in the world.

5.He is the sixth most followed world leader on Twitter with nearly 4.8 million followers.

6.According to Facebook, between the day the elections were announced and May 16, the counting day, 29 million people made 227 million poll-related interactions (posts, comments, shares, and likes), with 13 million people on Facebook posting 75 million updates related to Narendra Modi.

7.During the counting day alone, over 2 million tweets were made regarding the elections

8.Twitter is planning to replicate its Indian election lessens in in countries such as Brazil, Indonesia and the United States later this year by working closely with politicians and also partnering with mobile and media firms to distribute tweets both online and offline.

9.Nearly 10 per cent of India's entire advertising budget is spent on digital media.

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First Published: Jun 15 2014 | 1:10 PM IST

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