Snake Oil Salesmen!

Exit polls like politicians have a bad rep. There are the usual allegations of them being sponsored and suffering from inherent biases, right from collection of data to processing and interpreting them. No one bats an eyelid if they are proven wrong by the actual results. Fact is that psephology has reached a level of refinement where it will give you the exact direction the results are headed even when the numbers are off mark.

Delhi assembly election results were obvious on the day of the voting itself. Despite the clownish hyperbole and unsubstantiated tall claims of victory from the losing party ,it was clear that exit polls have rained on their parade. What was surprising even to me is the number of seats won by the winner. Based on the massive counter campaign mounted by BJP and quite decent public response to it , I expected them to get to double digits. Of course they are two short of it. So the numbers do not add up and let's see why is that .

Firstly let us take Congress. When you get a zero on top of getting another zero in the previous attempt; when over 90% of your candidates lose their deposits and when your vote share falls to 4.32 % ,something is not wrong, everything is ! There is a good theory that congress did not bring their A game as it would eat into AAP's vote share and that would help their national rival BJP. Essentially it would be true if congress had the ability to put up a fight. They don't. If this theory is true it is the worst thing Congress could have done. It would only hasten their demise. Marred by poor central leadership, handicapped by petty internal party politics, endemic cronyism  and  their history of corruption scandals. Congress has lost the faith of the electorate. Their traditional Muslim vote bank and numerically strong economically weaker strata of society has deserted them lock stock and barrel  for AAP. They need to realize that they are done. Done for good! Irrelevant Congress needs to reinvent itself. Half measures like mother and son taking turns to lead the party are not going to cut it. If Congress wishes to survive Gandhi's need to be pensioned now! That includes deemed Gandhi's, meaning Vadra's ! Thank them and let them go! This is of course only the beginning. But when they get to it let me know and I will give them further advice. Something tells me that they are never going to trouble me ever.

Next join me in congratulating BJP on their unqualified success in this election. It was so hard to loose but they managed to do it comprehensively. It really took five long years of doing absolutely nothing . You know how hard that is, but they did the impossible. They only have  themselves to thank for it.

I do not know when will they realise, if ever, that they can not win every election by putting up Modi's picture on the bill board. Time was Delhi BJP and its previous incarnation Jan Sangh had stalwarts at the helm. Madan Lal Khurana, Kedarnath Sawhney, Sahib Singh Verma easily come to mind. Today they have no one even approaching that stature. To be fair they could have roped in Arun Jaitley or very well liked Sushma Swaraj from the centre but both sadly passed away some time before the elections.

For every M G Ramachandran and N T Rama Rao there are dozens of Manoj Tiwari's. He is such a lightweight that early on in the campaign he got disdainfully branded as "Rinkiya Ke Papa", and it stuck. Not entirely without reason, since he does not have much else to his credit. Contrast that with the "terrorist " tag Kejriwal shook with aplomb and made his accusers look bad as bonus. Does Manoj Tiwari even know anything about Delhi ?

Every third voter in Delhi is a BJP voter. Now traditionally this core voter base was largely made up of Punjabi community that migrated after the partition of India and the business community of Delhi. BJP needs to have a look at a calendar. Surprise ! Surprise ! It is the year 2020! That Punjabi who migrated from Pakistan is now nursing his third and fourth generation. Muscular nationalism does not, repeat does not resonate with this new generation in the same way as their parents. Am I making a big explosive revelation? Surely I am not the first to discover that Kejriwal belongs to the same business community that forms the critical core of BJP . He has also packed his party with members from his community. Satyendra Jain and Swati Maliwal are well known public personalities. There are many others with strong base in Delhi. Was it a co incidence or was it a master stroke to slice away BJP vote share. I will leave for BJP to decipher.

Demographics is another Achilles heel. It is no secret that Delhi has grown exponentially. It has attracted a massive influx of people from all over the country to pursue education and jobs. Sadly it is far from being a melting pot. The influx has created several distinct pockets wildly different on cultural, social, economic and political scales. What has BJP done to communicate with these diverse groups? Just one case in point. Most of the recent  commotion at JNU in the run up to this election was led by students from outside of Delhi. Without taking any sides my question to Delhi BJP is how have you reached these vocal and energetic student groups that are a huge influence on their peers and are most likely voters in Delhi. I know the answer. BJP has done nothing except brand them after the fact. There is no inclusion, no preemption and no out reach. Just dealing through ABVP is not enough. It has only deepened the divide. Although they are mostly left inspired and left was really left out in this election with CPI polling 0.02 % and CPM polling 0.01 %. Their combined vote share below that of NOTA which came in at 0.4 %. Electorally insignificant to the result yet the massive noise they created and the inimical press it generated had very bad optics and generally showed BJP in an unfavourable light.

I realize Manoj Tiwari was para dropped on Delhi BJP as a nod to the sizable Bhojpuri linguistic group. However its downside is that the local leadership or whatever is left of it has felt under valued. Has BJP learned anything at all from the Kiran Bedi saga ? Please realize that the infamous 'surge" in voting for the party  after 3 pm either did not happen at all or was so insignificant as to be of no electoral value. That really means either  the voter is apathetic which is bad or what is worse, BJP workers are. For a cadre based party that spells disaster.

Emasculated local leadership and the non existent leadership mentoring programme ensured that the chinks in AAP's armour were left unexpoilted for want of a dynamic leader. There was no CM face to take on Kejriwal. He had a virtual free run to score as he pleased. His strategic mistakes were not taken advantage of. He was smart enough not to engage BJP on Shaheen bagh yet BJP failed miserably to answer him  on Bijli -pani - school. Who was asking where exactly these schools are ? Who was showing Kejriwal's false marketing up ? No one was because BJP had found Shaheen Bagh! That was to be their be all and end all. How pathetic! It would still be some consolation if that matter was handled in a befitting manner. Even with a compliant central government BJP failed to get much out of Shaheen Bagh as they allowed them all the initiative. They let Shaheen Bagh narrative to take hold and got shown up as  all talk and no action weaklings.

"Modi is BJP; BJP is Modi" is a very slippery path to the bottom. If you don't believe me ask congress about it. Prashant kishor may or may not have guided the AAP party but BJP needs to run a modern training programme for their leaders to learn what to say , when to say it and how to say it. Anyone that fails to attend the programme should be barred from opening their mouth. Better ask most of them to shut up. 

IT cell needs to be brought up to speed and led by a competent strategist. You must trust me on this, BJP needs some very serious media outreach. I have not seen a greater barrage of bad press against BJP in a long time. International press too.  BJP should never ever trot out the freebies as a reason for their loss unless they want to deceive themselves. Explain to me how you lost the up market Greater kailash by a margin of nearly 17,000 votes and win  the lower middle class Karawal nagar constituency?

That brings me to the winner who certainly does not need my advice. AAP is an enigma wrapped in mystery and sort of defies definition. So  let us see what kind of a beast AAP is. To me it is a chameleon  that paints itself in the colour it needs to hunt. What started out as a contrarian party has morphed into a " Hindu" party. Or has it? AAP has successfully usurped BJP's tag of "party with a Difference" by making it " new kind of politics". It has successfully cut the ground under BJP's Hindu credentials by bringing in "Lord Hanuman"; the greatest ever devotee of Sri Ram ! AAP has successfully become the darling of Muslims who tend to vote en bloc. I think he played his cards very well by focusing the election on water , electricity and education and then spicing it up with his tricks.

AAP also has a Congress face. Sort of the congress that congress is not. It has completely appropriated Congresses captive voting blocks by using the congress tactic of doling largesse masquerading as social welfare to enhance their electoral chances. For example AAP government selectively paid salaries only to Muslim clergy, a tactic straight out of Congress play book. Kejriwal's studious silence on Shaheen bagh and tasking his deputy to speak in its favour was a master stroke. BJP got roughly about 39% of the vote share that leaves the odd 60% and AAP very smartly and  selectively doled out sops like free bus travel for women ,etc. to keep voters engaged and hooked to it. For all intents and purposes AAP is the new congress. It certainly has got their entire voter base. I am amazed at congress though. BJP is not decimating them AAP is; at least in Delhi. Why are they smug about AAP's win?

What is a common thread in all this is  that all these parties are selling their brands of snake oil ! A supposed cure for every thing except that there is no such thing. BJP has the MODI brand. Did not work on Delhi, did not work last time either . Congress insists on selling the GANDHI brand way after its sell by date. It has not worked anywhere in a very long time. Aap is selling the KEJRI brand. This new brand of snake oil did not find many takers in Punjab but so far seems to be selling very well in Delhi. There is one thing they all need to understand though. If you want to be a one man army like Congress , be prepared for the fate of Congress. People will eventually find out that snake oil does not cure.