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It`s simple, my dear poll reporters: The Pioneer
New Delhi, Dec 07: In the days before opinion and exit polls became growth industries and sources of disinformation, only journalists had the monopoly of getting electoral forecasts horribly wrong.
New Delhi, Dec 07: In the days before opinion and exit polls became growth industries and sources of disinformation, only journalists had the monopoly of getting electoral forecasts horribly wrong. During the election season, there were two types of media reports in evidence. The first, and by far the most honest exercise, consisted of hapless reporters who, regardless of what they actually felt, concluded that every encounter was "a tough fight" because there were too many local imponderables.
Predictably, these meandering exercises in prevarication proved too bland for popular taste and a new school of popular journalism emerged. In an age of black and white, these reporters produced what was called colour copy.
The most readable of these were descriptions of the campaign's heat and dust. At a time when Doordarshan steered clear of anything but official handouts, they were the only accounts of the passions generated by N T Rama Rao and M G Ramachandran or the buffoonery of Raj Narayan.
Competing with them were pop sociologists, usually blessed with dollops of radical sentiment. They never believed what they saw on the trail of the charismatic or what they heard while sipping tea with local peasants. To them, there was always a hidden dimension usually located in abstruse concepts like the moral economy or grassroots secularism. Mysteriously, or perhaps not so, deciphering the mental haze of the voter invariably led to expedient conclusions. My scrapbook of the 1984 General Election, which produced the most conclusive Congress victory to date, is full of reports predicting how Amitabh Bachchan would get a pasting in Allahabad and how Charan Singh's rustic wisdom would prevail over the brash Congress.
I refer to the inglorious history of election reporting in India because over the past few days, every Indian with a TV set has been subjected to a flood of pseudo-intellectual inanities. Do not be misled by urban voices, we were cautioned; the rural voter thinks differently, but, is less vocal. Digvijay Singh, pundits said, has sewn up the caste game and will bowl a googly on the last day; the wily Jogi knows the adivasi mind better than the BJP bania; and how, it was asked sneeringly, can a chiffon-clad maharani connect with wrinkled rustics?
At the root of these profound insights was a belief that there is nothing called the average voter. Instead, there are disaggregated communities that are incapable of relating to either ideology or the big picture. People, it was insinuated, vote invariably along strict class or caste lines, without concern for the lofty propaganda of the big leaders. The PM can talk endlessly about the growing pride in India but, the sceptic asks, how is this relevant to a voter who doesn't know the Internet?
The most remarkable aspect of this celebration of the fragment is that it persists despite evidence to the contrary. Indira won famously in 1971 because she offered a new vision; she was decimated six years later because she violated the norms of dharma; and Rajiv prevailed in 1984 because people care about India as a nation.
The same patterns are replicated at the State level. Narendra Modi emerged as the folk hero of Gujarat because he articulated a gut Hindu anger; Naveen Patnaik wins election after election despite his poor grasp over Oriya because he is perceived as decent and upright; the same enabled Sheila to win Delhi; and Uma Bharati swept MP because she expressed the rage against underdevelopment. Nehru called it the "silken bond." There is a fundamental commonality in democratic expression and that link is forged by the big picture. This is what connects the Gujjar to the Jat and the middle classes to the adivasis. For those who vote as Indians, no party is untouchable; it is the ghettoised analyst who believes in exclusion. India may be an infuriatingly complex society but it is also governed by amazingly simple norms of right and wrong.
The most readable of these were descriptions of the campaign's heat and dust. At a time when Doordarshan steered clear of anything but official handouts, they were the only accounts of the passions generated by N T Rama Rao and M G Ramachandran or the buffoonery of Raj Narayan.
Competing with them were pop sociologists, usually blessed with dollops of radical sentiment. They never believed what they saw on the trail of the charismatic or what they heard while sipping tea with local peasants. To them, there was always a hidden dimension usually located in abstruse concepts like the moral economy or grassroots secularism. Mysteriously, or perhaps not so, deciphering the mental haze of the voter invariably led to expedient conclusions. My scrapbook of the 1984 General Election, which produced the most conclusive Congress victory to date, is full of reports predicting how Amitabh Bachchan would get a pasting in Allahabad and how Charan Singh's rustic wisdom would prevail over the brash Congress.
I refer to the inglorious history of election reporting in India because over the past few days, every Indian with a TV set has been subjected to a flood of pseudo-intellectual inanities. Do not be misled by urban voices, we were cautioned; the rural voter thinks differently, but, is less vocal. Digvijay Singh, pundits said, has sewn up the caste game and will bowl a googly on the last day; the wily Jogi knows the adivasi mind better than the BJP bania; and how, it was asked sneeringly, can a chiffon-clad maharani connect with wrinkled rustics?
At the root of these profound insights was a belief that there is nothing called the average voter. Instead, there are disaggregated communities that are incapable of relating to either ideology or the big picture. People, it was insinuated, vote invariably along strict class or caste lines, without concern for the lofty propaganda of the big leaders. The PM can talk endlessly about the growing pride in India but, the sceptic asks, how is this relevant to a voter who doesn't know the Internet?
The most remarkable aspect of this celebration of the fragment is that it persists despite evidence to the contrary. Indira won famously in 1971 because she offered a new vision; she was decimated six years later because she violated the norms of dharma; and Rajiv prevailed in 1984 because people care about India as a nation.
The same patterns are replicated at the State level. Narendra Modi emerged as the folk hero of Gujarat because he articulated a gut Hindu anger; Naveen Patnaik wins election after election despite his poor grasp over Oriya because he is perceived as decent and upright; the same enabled Sheila to win Delhi; and Uma Bharati swept MP because she expressed the rage against underdevelopment. Nehru called it the "silken bond." There is a fundamental commonality in democratic expression and that link is forged by the big picture. This is what connects the Gujjar to the Jat and the middle classes to the adivasis. For those who vote as Indians, no party is untouchable; it is the ghettoised analyst who believes in exclusion. India may be an infuriatingly complex society but it is also governed by amazingly simple norms of right and wrong.