As I meet voters, party workers and politicians, I get the sense that fear-mongering and lies are afoot this election season, along with freebies.

In today’s full-front-page advertisement in The Times of India, the BJP has warned the backward caste voters that Congress will add Muslims to their reservation list, essentially eating into their quota.

On the other hand, Congress has warned the nation that BJP will do away with the Constitution.

Unlike 2014, which was about development, this election has suddenly fallen back to religion.

To some extent, BJP still has an element of ‘vikas’, unlike Congress, which, instead of vehemently talking about job creation and development, is still stuck in  ‘defeat Modi’ mode.

Of course, the Hindutva politics of the BJP is very much alive and I fear it shall remain so as long as Congress’ appeasement politics is alive.

Secularism in India has been reduced to mere political currency, even by the so-called secular parties.

This reminds me of Sonia Gandhi, who gave a grand and emotive speech in the Parliament soon after the Gujarat riots. She told the BJP leaders present, “You have turned Gujarat into the land of Godse, not Gandhi.” But when the Gujarat elections soon rolled in, she promptly appointed a former RSS member, Shankersinh Vaghela, as her election in charge!! 

That is why Booker Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy rightly said, “For more than half a century now, the hatred and mutual distrusts (between Hindus and Muslims after partition) has been exacerbated, toyed with and never allowed to heal by politicians, led from the front by Indira Gandhi.

Every political party has tilled the marrow of our secular Parliamentary democracy, mining it for electoral advantage.

Like termites excavating a mound, they’ve made tunnels and underground passages, undermining the meaning of ‘secular’ until it has become an empty shell that’s about to implode.”

Now, along with religion, freebies have gone mainstream. Be it Congress in Karnataka or BJP in Madhya Pradesh, instead of teaching the people how to fish, they are giving them fish snatched from the hands of hard-working, tax-paying middle-class Indians. 

In short, political parties have decided to ‘officially’ bribe their way to victory using tax-payers’ money. Worse, this indiscriminate dispensing of freebies could kill work ethic, ambition and inclination towards entrepreneurship not just in our State but across the country.

A healthy democracy needs a strong Opposition and only Congress can provide it. Unfortunately, they continue to obsess over minorities and the Gandhis instead of new ideas.

 In time, the BJP will also face a similar problem as it is too dependent on Hindutva and Modi. I sense the post-Modi era is going to be a tumultuous one for India. 

For now, the run-up to this election has been disappointing. One assumed that the BJP’s ‘vikas’ promise would change the political discourse from religion to development, but alas.

Dull elections & exciting bookies

A day before the election, I met a few party workers and rural voters to gauge their mood. It turns out they were in no mood. This election lacks the excitement we saw in 2014 and 2019.

There is no Modi wave this time, but there is the feeling of ‘Modi-hope’ — he is a messiah or saviour-like mindset. I see a similar cult following among Congress workers too, but it was more for Siddaramaiah than Rahul Gandhi.

There are no catch phrases on the lips of BJP supporters. ‘Abki baar char sau paar’ and ‘Viksit Bharat 2047’ haven’t garnered any traction.

On the other hand, there is no sign of even remote expectation among Congress voters about I.N.D.I.A forming a government.

 But they seem to have some hope that by some miracle they will hold BJP under 272.

 But the most exciting interaction I had was a chance meeting with a few bookies visiting Mysuru from Bengaluru.

These bookies had as much election data and the ability to analyse the election as any pundit or psephologist I have seen on TV. They had robust information from the ground based on which they had opened betting odds!

In Mysuru, one of the bookies said he didn’t take bets as the winner was clear and even said the winner would win by a margin of nearly a lakh. Another said, in Wayanad Rahul Gandhi had trouble initially but now will see a very comfortable victory.

The now famous BJP face in Tamil Nadu, Annamalai, the bookies agreed, had moved to a competitive space and said the BJP might get 2-3 seats in Tamil Nadu.

When I asked about Karnataka, they said the BJP may not do as well as they did last time but, at the same time, said Congress will not be exceptional either — one will barely touch double digit and the other will not get as much as last time.

The betting pattern was very interesting. They showed me a graph indicating how the pattern had changed every couple of days in the last three weeks. I was blown away! Every hard-hitting speech by a senior leader or incident showed a change in the betting pattern.

It felt like I was sitting in a corporate office with MBAs giving me a financial presentation, albeit this was on two large laptops placed on the hood of a car with hot tea and cigarettes.

They said the most exciting Constituencies in South Karnataka were Mandya, Tumakuru, Hassan and Bengaluru Rural as they expect close fights. I asked them how often they get their numbers right, and all of them said, they usually get close enough most times. 

Then I asked, “Abki baar char sau paar?” They all laughed and said, “Aur ek baar Modi sarkar possible saar… but Char sau paar impossible saar.”

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