Author: Editorial
Publication: The Free Press Journal
Date: December 18, 2002
URL: http://www.samachar.com/features/181202-editorial.html
The outcome in Gujarat clearly stunned
everyone. The winners did not expect this kind of victory and the losers
this kind of defeat. But the voters did. Otherwise, the results would have
been different. Of course, the media pundits and other analysts would come
up with `hazaar' rationalizations for their failure to read the voter mood
right.
Endless reams of newsprint would
be wasted in the coming days and weeks on offering largely pointless ex-post-facto
explanations as to why and how the BJP ended up getting more than two-thirds
of the seats on offer. Though most pollsters should have been looking for
a quiet corner to hide themselves from the public glare, but the thick-skinned
among them were already offering lame excuses for their wholly lop-sided
predictions.
Whatever their qualifications to
conduct these surveys, serious students of psephology must protest at the
abuse of the developing science by the new-fangled Indian pollsters who
think nothing of predicting what their pay-masters want them to predict.
In this context, in particular a weekly English magazine, edited by someone
who is largely innocent of the intricacies of Indian political system,
ended up with egg on its face for having shown the chutzpah to predict
a clear majority for the Congress Party.
Now, we are told, by way of a supposedly
valid explanation, that the magazine had got it all wrong because as many
as 24 per cent of the voters were fence-sitters when it conducted its sample
poll. And the genius-pollster hired by the magazine, no doubt at a considerable
sum, was only too pleased to assume that all 24 per cent would vote the
way his own political predilections dictated.
Sorry state of the pollsters aside,
the most likely reason they will trot out for the BJP landslide is that
under Narendra Modi it had wholly communalised the electorate. Already,
the Congress Party megaphones led by that awkward phrase-monger, Jaipal
Reddy, have begun to ascribe the BJP's big win to the climate of hate created
by Modi. To buttress the charge, they point to the high BJP tally in the
riot- torn areas in the State. But it isn't as if the Congress Party itself
is free from the taint of communalism. The fact is both the Congress and
the BJP played the communal game, pandering to the majority community's
heightened security concerns post- Godhra and post-Akshardham.
It was, however, the BJP which was
able to bring home to the voters the message that there existed a genuine
threat from terrorists from Pakistan and their collaborators at home. As
the Union Home Minister L. K. Advani said those who harbour terrorists
are far more guilty than the terrorists themselves who in anyway are foreign
nationals sent by a hostile neighbour to spread mayhem in this country
and are unaccountable to our society.
For sure, the atmosphere in Gujarat
was highly charged following the tragic events beginning with the burning
of the bogey of the Sabarmati Express earlier in the year and the heart-rending
violence that followed in its train. The resulting polarisation helped
the BJP. The Congress tried to exploit it but in vain.
The craven manner in which it abandoned
all pretence to secularism, real or pseudo, and embraced the BJP's calling
card recoiled on the party. Yet, it is wrong to say that the BJP won only
in the riot-torn areas. Its win was spread evenly throughout the State,
including the earthquake affected Kutch where it managed to win two seats.
Above all, thanks to the relentless
high octane media and opposition blitz against Modi, who was accused of
genocide, pogroms, state-sponsored massacres, et al, and whom the paper
tigers sought to drag to the international court of human rights, the interim
BJP chief minister grew into a leader in his own right. Never before had
the BJP won any state with this kind of majority.
The more the media, especially the
English dailies with an honourable exception or two, and a foreign-funded
TV channel, spewed venom and hate against Modi, the more ordinary Gujarati
men and women embraced him to their bosoms.
Due largely to this Modi-phobic
campaign, Narendrabhai emerged the most popular leader in the State after
his real idol, Sardar Patel. Modi was bigger than any national leader of
his own party or any other. And he rose above the BJP to reach out to people
who may not have otherwise contemplated voting for the `kamal' given the
party's lacklustre record in power in the State. In the emotionally charged
campaign, it virtually turned into Modi vs, All. Modi won. Everyone else
lost. That maybe why there is hope that he will soon return Gujarat to
normalcy.
And will press ahead with the agenda
of governance above everything else. Assuring peace and security to all
sections of the society will naturally be his first priority. And to restore
the lead to the State in economic and industrial devel- opment will be
next. Issues of bread and butter must engage him.
Meanwhile, the purveyors of hate
against Modi will be well-advised to look inwards. By putting words into
his mouth about Newtonian laws and painting him an ogre in clumsily conceived
and equally clumsily drawn daily strips they revealed their own depraved
mindsets. The voters who returned him triumphant despite the relentless
plethora of abuse heaped on him by those who wear their pseudo-secular
hearts on their sleeves cannot be faulted. At least not in our democracy.
