While I was watching the expert analysis of Bihar Elections Results on television an old memory came to my mind.
When I was a kid, every Raksha Bandhan, we used to go to our cousins’ place. Once Rakhi and other rituals were done, all the kids in the house would go to the roof and fly kites. This particular episode occurred when I was nine, my younger brother was seven and the cousin brother was six, the cousin sisters were a little too young that time. After a few hours of kite flying, all three of us were leaning on the railing, all tired and just looking around. A few hundred meters on a different roof we noticed a man and a woman standing. The man was lean, and the lady was a little heavy, she looked big and strong and especially when compared to the man. The lady walked towards the door and went inside. The man followed her, although he was walking fine, but all of a sudden started limping. He limped for a while and sat down. And then it started-
My brother said, it looks like Aunty beat the shit out of Uncle and that’s why he is unable to walk. The youngest one added to the story, yes that’s quite possible, Aunty is quite strong. If they both fight, Aunty would definitely win, no doubt about that. Poor Uncle! I added, what can he do, Aunty eats all his food, that’s why he is so weak and when he complains, he receives an flying bowl on his head. Then we added some more spicy facts to the story, and continued for some time. The interesting point is that we did not know any thing about that man or the woman, we just saw them an hour ago, they might not even be a couple. It was more likely that the man just stepped on a pebble and limped for a few steps or twisted his ankle. But that’s just one line, ten seconds, that’s not an interesting story at all. Our interpretation of the incident was entertaining, at least for us, six – seven year old kids tired after flying kites, killing some free time. We were having fun, just laughing at the stories we were inventing at the moment and making the best of the time we had got together.
That’s exactly how the expert analysis of Bihar elections on mainstream news channels looked like on the tenth of November.
The Krishna Avtar Tejashwi Yadav has stepped out of his father’s shadows and has carved a niche for himself. He started his election at a very good note, he did not talk about caste or religion politics, breaking the caste barrier. He tried to change the election agendas to unemployment and issues that matter. After BJP witnessed a setback in the Phase I of the election, they pulled up their socks. Modi and his other star campaigners started bringing polarizing issues like NPR and NRC in the campaign. Further, Modi tried his best to remind people of the “Jungle Raj” after the phase I set back. If it were not for Indian National Congress’ poor strike rate Grand Alliance would have registered a clear majority. In addition to this, BJP used LJP to keep an upper hand in the alliance by cutting JD(U)’s seats. Also, Owaisi’s AIMIM played a role of vote-cutter (vote-katua) for the grand alliance. However, at the same time, the left has reincarnated in this election.
It sure is an interesting narration. The analysis ran through out the day and kept its audience glued to the news channels. But is any of it true? It sure is possible, it looks like it from the numbers, but is the interpretation presented to the viewers actually the reason behind what happened? Or is it just a whimsical imagination like a five or a nine year old kid, inventing a story behind the limping man?
Let me provide you with some aspects of the election which might explain the reason behind what happened and why. But they won’t be as interesting and captivating as the version you saw on tv channels.
Lets start with the difference in the different phases of the election. The following figures show the number of seats won by the different alliances in different phases.
Its quite clear that NDA did approximately the same in Phase 2 & 3 but not in Phase 1. Why? What is one major difference between phase one and the rest of the phases that mainstream media did not even care to mention. In the figure below, blue region is phase 1, yellow is phase 2 and pink is phase 3.
As of February 2019, 16 districts (out of Bihar’s total 38 districts) were/are affected by Naxal extremists. Eleven out of the total sixteen Naxal hit districts form the part of the blue region i.e. phase I of the election; four districts form the part of the yellow region i.e. phase II and one in the pink i.e. phase III. Even in this election, explosives were found in some of these districts like Gaya and Aurangabad. Naxalite insurgency is the reason for the difference between the phase 1 and the other two phases. Now look at the following figures keeping Naxalism in mind:
Phase one had 11 naxal hit districts, second had 4 and third had only one and it is proportional to the extreme left wing parties in the above figure CPI(ML). People affiliated to Communist Party of India have undergone so many separations and mergers that it is very difficult that who is running what agenda. Left did not rise in Bihar, Nitish Kumar’s government failed in controlling Naxalism and that’s why they lost the Phase I. The saddest thing is Grand Alliance giving left parties space in their alliance. This indicate that we are heading towards a disaster sometime in the near future and we are clueless about it. It is true that left contested officially only on 30 or less seats, but no one knows how many seats did RJD win with the left support.
I was extremely surprised when the news channels did not mention it for a noticeable time in their day long analysis. It looks like there are many forces supporting the Naxalites in India. #UrbanNaxal is real! Forget acknowledging Urban Naxals, media is now not ready to acknowledge even the idea of Naxalites.
Do you need to evoke the feelings of a Jungle Raj, when you are already living in a Jungle? Are Naxal hit areas any less then a jungle raj?
As a matter of fact, election campaigns are region specific, issues specific, unfortunately caste/religion specific but not phase specific. If in case the pink region had gone for election in the beginning and the blue region at last, Modi and his star campaigners would have brought up the Jungle Raj and NRC/370 in the beginning right away. And then once they would have got 22 seats in the last phase, the so called experts would have said “People rejected BJPs polarizing politics of NRC and accepted Tejashwi’s new approach”.
It was a time for a debate on this issue. Wasn’t it? Instead, the point of discussion were insane; Nitish Kumar is old, he is tired, Tejashwi is young, blah blah and blah blah, but not a single meaningful argument.
Tejashwi Yadav has left Lalu’s legacy behind and is coming out as a formidable leader even for the national politics. What has he done to corroborate this statement? Has he done anything, I literally mean anything, in politics or otherwise, even in his personal life that proves the above statement made by some analysts sitting in the studios?
He can’t leave Lalu’s legacy behind because he is the legacy. His entire life is Lalu’s legacy. After playing two one-day and four twenty twenty games with the highest score of 19 in his first class cricket career, he ended up becoming a part of Delhi Daredevils for four seasons. He earned Rs 30-40 Lakhs every year in the first four season of IPL without playing a single delivery; not because he is Tejashwi but only because is Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Tejashwi. I feel so very sorry for that one person who would have made it to the sixteen if it were not for Tejashvi. What has he done in his life on his own? He couldn’t even finish high school.
He is a chief minister candidate only because he is Lalu’s Tejashwi and not because he is an individual with an individual identity. He does not need to explicitly mention Muslim-Yadav alliance in his campaign. His father built the entire infrastructure on that ground. Moreover, even when we go with the numbers, he is failing in the state, let alone becoming a national politician. In 2015, RJD contested on 101 seats and won 80 seats i.e. a strike rate reaching almost 80% (79.2% to be precise). However, even after NDA’s internal differences where LJP tried its level best to crush JD(U) and succeeded to a great extent, Tejashwi’s RJD performed worse than its 2015 performance. RJD contested on 140 seats and won only 75 i.e. a strike rate of only 53.5%. It is just an assumption that Grand Alliance (Mahagathbandhan) was pulled down by Indian National Congress, it is equally likely possible that if RJD would have contested on those 70 seats, it would have won exactly the same number of seats.
All this new Tejashwi Yadav is a whimsical imagination of a few people sitting in a news studio exactly like five six years old kids imagining an aunty beating a shit out of an uncle. For that matter, not only Tejashwi but all other political sons like Akhilesh Yadav, Uddhav Thackeray, Rahul Gandhi so on and so forth are incompetent and are destined to be doomed(politically). They are the reason why Amit Shah can confidently claim that BJP will remain in power at least till 2050. They have egos of their own but no identity of their own.
Having said all this, I was still a little surprised with the results. I was expecting BJP to get around 100 seats (BJP alone, not NDA) even when BJP contested only on 110 seats. If you liked this article, please stay tuned for the next one where I share some more number and graphs indicating why the results are the way we saw them, why I thought BJP would win 100 seats and why it didn’t and more importantly how media and some politicians are abusing the democratic freedom.
Thank you all for reading it. Please do share the article if you liked it.
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