#Elections2024: Raging Rhetoric, Rash of Rumours and Fear Index
The buzz catchers in financial markets are checking the odds offered at Phalodi satta bazaar. CEOs and investment bankers who devour Drucker and Lynch are speed-dialling for insights on hearsay and heretical commentary. Nobody is yet predicting an upset but the shift in campaign narrative from Abik Baar 400 Paar to questions of identity is triggering speculation about vulnerability.
Shankkar Aiyar | The Third Eye | The New Indian Express | 12 May 2024
The speculations market is on fire as punts are threatened by raging rhetoric and a rash of rumours, theories and reveries. The cognoscenti are harbouring doubts and making acquaintance with nervousness. On Thursday, the benchmark Sensex slid over 1,000 points and the India VIX volatility index — the stock market’s Fear Index — attained a 19-month high this week. Data-dependent denizens, corporate tsars and investment bankers, who devour Peter Drucker and Peter Lynch, are speed-dialling and googling for insights on hearsay and heretical commentary.
Suddenly, the buzz catchers in the financial world are checking the odds at the Phalodi satta bazaar. They are seeking the views of pollsters on any signals off the exit polls. They are worried about implications of the Nitish effect on the Bihar tally. They are seeking answers about the Sena vs Sena and Pawar vs Pawar battles, and the erosion-of-seats count in Maharashtra. They are asking questions about whispers of possible losses in Gujarat, of four to five unsure seats in Rajasthan.
Used to a world of incentives and motivation, they wonder if the Congress guarantees provided in Karnataka are outweighing Modi’s guarantees. Sometime in September 2023, a senior investment banker who was returning from a dinner of high networth individuals, called to air a question. Was there any risk of the BJP not returning to power? The poser was triggered by the formation of the opposition alliance in Patna. A 10-year reign’s anti-incumbency was always going to be challenging. But it was too early for any determination of a trend.
A few months later, the BJP swept the assembly elections in the states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, settling the doubts. It is useful to recall the statistics of the BJP-led NDA’s 2019 victory. The alliance swept up all the 26 seats Gujarat, won 41 of the 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra, 39 of the 40 seats in Bihar, 25 of the 28 seats in Karnataka, 24 of the 25 seats in Rajasthan, 28 of the 29 seats in Madhya Pradesh, and 9 of the 11 seats in Chhattisgarh.
Modi Magic had taken the count of seats with 50-plus percent votes from 136 in 2014 to 224 in 2019, and the victory in the Hindi belt held the potential of a sweep in the crucial 200-odd seats where the BJP was in direct contest with the Congress.
In February 2024, the BJP scintillated its core constituency with a playbook promising ‘Abki baar, 400 paar’. The promise was backed by the euphoria which followed the consecration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya and the promise of a uniform civil code energised the core constituency. It was scaffolded by the large base of welfare beneficiaries and riveted to the promise of Viksit Bharat by 2047. The focus on investment-led growth catapulted the stock market indices to new highs, thrilling the investor community.
Cut to May 2024. What changed in the intervening weeks to catalyse the new questions? There is much bafflement among punters and the general public about the shift in campaign strategy. Following the spectre of low voter turnout in the first phase, the BJP’s campaign rhetoric has focused on the deployment of euphemisms of identity, resulting in a greater degree of polarisation.
There is also a recurring hum of curiosity about a rift in the Sangh parivar. The notion is contestable given that the Modi regime has delivered on the key aspirations of the RSS — the abrogation of Article 370 and consecration of the Ram temple — and promises to unveil more.
The debate among punters — and pollsters and pundits — is whether the shift in strategy will consolidate the core but alienate the swing voter. Arguably, for the players the questions are less about voting intent and more about market position. Those long on Modinomics are sussing up the landscape if they must go short on their punts.
For sure, nobody is as yet calling or predicting a grand upset — the worst-case scenario envisaged is that the outcome will be closer to the 2014 score. There is no escaping, though, that the high-velocity attacks are engineering a perception of vulnerability among believers and atheists.
There is cause of concern beyond partisan politics. India is the largest democracy. The largest election in the world has over 960 million voters eligible to exercise their right of choice on how they want to be governed; of this, over 18 million are first-time voters seeking a vision for their future. This week, Elections 2024 will witness voting in 96 constituencies in Phase IV — with votes already cast in 285 constituencies, we are past the halfway mark.
Theory has it that election campaigns are about ideas to resolve the dilemmas of competing compulsions and conflicting crises. Instead, the campaign — across party lines — has yo-yoed between claims and counterclaims, exposés and denials. The blitzkrieg of sloganeering has scarcely helped the cause of voter enthusiasm.
Nobel laureate Herbert Simon had once memorably observed that a surfeit of information creates a poverty of attention. The principle conceptualised by Simon owes its origin to public policy design — the impact of incomplete information and the implications for outcomes — and the construct applies to election campaigns too. The quality of campaigns and the nature of debates this time have left the voter wondering if his/her choice is being informed.
Shankkar Aiyar, political economy analyst, is author of ‘Accidental India’, ‘Aadhaar: A Biometric History of India’s 12-Digit Revolution’ and ‘The Gated Republic –India’s Public Policy Failures and Private Solutions’.
You can email him at shankkar.aiyar@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @ShankkarAiyar. This column was first published here. His previous columns can be found here.