Abhijit Speaks :

Mr. Market always gets it right – as one of my friends Harish would say it. If you’ve to follow the election results, they are always priced in by the market.  The ‘charts’ were clearly showing a very favourable market result, the question was how much.. (note: This is not with the benefit of hindsight)

I had offered to my friends even before a single vote was cast that it’d most likely be going to be congress, with even a better mandate than last time, ofcourse however I kept asking myself where the numbers would come from? The reason I was thinking along these  lines was fairly straightforward for me – Though there was a considerable negativity about the present government then, there was not a factor that could sweep against it, and people were generally Okay with MM Singh . The arrogance of the third and fourth front was clearly a precursor to what lied ahead for them (perhaps they were not confident enough or over confident that’d work against them.) Though I still expected BJP to do substantially better than what it did in the recent elections.What came as a surprise was the result in Maharashtra – for I was inclined towards a favourable outcome for BJP-SS vs. INC-NCP. The MNS factor was much larger than  I had thought that made the results look much different than what they were.

I even told my friends the biggest suprise will come from UP and it’d either go in favour of Congress or BJP and whoever wins there is likely to make it to the poll position.

There was an easy parallel to draw between this election and the 2004 US presidents election, where everything that could conceivably go wrong against Bush was wrong and yet he managed to get elected with a record-breaking victory. The situation looked vastly similar over here for the Congress (that was one of my main thesis for predicting an easier congress win.)

My friend Harish offered me that left would be decimated in this election and he said I’d be surprised if they cross 20 in this election. Frankly, I had no idea about the politics in Kerala or WB, but he was certainly right about it.

Now lets look at the results more closely and see what ‘themes emerge’. First and the most important thing is – The national elections in India are largely Federal. Every state votes for a very localized issue and a sum total of all that happens eventually results into a national mandate. So the numbers do lie to some extent. I am not sure whether such a federal nature of election is the right choice that the voters make or if it is so, does it not make sense to look more closely at our democratic system more closely and move towards a much more Federal structure?

For the congress – First heartiest congratulations for showing the best ever performance since 1991. And most of that Credit goes to Rahul Gandhi he’s that nice-likable-can-do-nothing-wrong type of a guy and has delivered for its party and lets give the credit where it is due.Mr. MM Singh deserves his fair share of the credit for being a soft-spoken guy and bringing a credible image for the people to vote for (I’d not go ahead and call him performing in any ways.)

Lessons for BJP from this election – There’s a long list but I’d briefly go over a few very obvious. The single problem with BJP this time was – it miscalculated the elections as national elections and tried to keep projecting ‘Majboot Neta – Nirnayak Sarkar’. With the benefit of hindsight, I’d say this was a wrong strategy. Had there been a little localized efforts the results would have been notch better (though I still doubt to create any meaningful dent to congress.)

Second and it is the most important lesson – they’ve to ask themselves where’s their next level of Growth coming from? It seems like they cannot go beyond their presence in the few states.

Third – it’s much easier for a voter to shift towards Congress than other way round, that has been amply demonstrated in several elections across several states (when there’s no choice, Congress becomes a default choice) so it is of fundamental importance to make sure not to loose whatever you get. (Rajasthan and Delhi a few years ago case in point..)

Fourth – Evaluate the allies – if they are not working get rid of the baggage (and build from the ground up again and not look for different allies.) ‘cos it seems the allies that work for you eventually want to get rid of you (BJD and JDU case in point..) so you may have to evaluate the long term benefits of going alone vis-a-vis short term losses (which are not going to be big anyways)

For the regional parties – Have they lost relevance? Quite the contrary, the way they could play it is – taking a senior role in the local politics but offering a senior role to one of the national parties in national politics is important and staying away from opportunism is extremely important. You have to make a choice to go with either of the parties (or none at all) and stick to that stand forever, people don’t like jockying on different horses. They wait and wait patiently before they say enough is enough. (Ram Vilas Paswan case in point.) and the presence of regional parties in the other state is of even greater importance where one of the two national parties is clearly ahead because they keep the necessary checks.

For the next general elections though the task will be cut out for Congress, remember replicating an extraordinary performance is lot harder than doing somewhat better than last time and yet do good enough (that should be the only silver lining for the BJP.)

The task cut out for the next government is substantial (and I am of the opinion Governments can’t and generally don’t do anything useful,  but they can cause harm. With the present government the later seems an unlikely scenario in the short term atleast.) and hope they live upto it atleast 50bips to the par.

To the voters at large – I am completely at a loss to comprehend the complete apathy of the voter for the elections. Perhaps to a large extent many of them believe that whom they vote for doesn’t make a difference with the government in center. To an extent they may be right, but I’d urge everyone to vote in your local elections – the corporations and the vidhansabha because, their outcomes directly affect our day to day life (Pune Corporation and the Debris problem a case in point here.)

Finally, I’d like to conclude with an interesting thought that came to my mind and an analogy if I could call it to draw – Congress is like Microsoft – they are everywhere, anywhere you go you’ve to fight them. BJP is more like Yahoo, has got an act of screwing up when the least needed. The natural Question is  – Who is Google? BSP ( I know some of my friends would laugh at it) or they are still two guys in a garage?