The Lord is thy shepherd, thou shalt not want

Suppose you are an average person. Your life hasn't changed one bit, neither for the better, nor for the worse - since the last elections. How are you likely to vote? Add to it that there are no ideological factors involved.

Actually this is a complex question. New market entrants typically have to spend three times as much as the incumbent in order to make a sizable dent in the market share. In election terms, it boils down to credibility. A party that couldn't even name a chief ministerial candidate prior to the elections was actually hoping to buck the trend. It doesn't help that Gujaratis are used to seeing the haggard and forlorn faces of migrant laborers from other states every season. It doesn't help that the antics of Ministers like Ramadoss occupy the front pages every day. Add to it the following:

There were some stunning facts to go with it. Value of farm-output had grown four times. School drop-out rate was down to 3% from over 40%. All villages, without exception, were getting 24 hour, 3 phase power for homes. Besides, the pipelines and canals fetching Narmada water, more than 140,000 check-dams and village ponds across the state had solved the drinking-water and irrigation problems in a state that was perennially drought-prone, arid and dependent on water-tankers ferrying expensive water.The number of registered unemployed in Gujarat had actually declined by over 15%. Almost a lakh rural-poor expecting mothers had delivered, assisted by private gynaecologists, all paid for by the state. To top it all, the past five years were riot-free, curfew-free, and despite being targeted by several terror groups from across the borders, terror-strike-free.

The above summary was by none other than Sushil Pandit, a BJP campaign manager, a hired gun, a man from the ad world. This is the person who was involved with the Shining campaign. Perhaps lucky for him, "vibrant" doesn't rhyme well.

Contrary to what the media would have you believe, there wasn't really a strong ideological factor in this election. The media got it wrong on almost every count and that perhaps is the saddest part in the whole affair. The CNN-IBN exit polls, presided over by Yogendra Yadav came so far off the mark that you couldn't fare much worse tossing a coin. It is not just a matter of getting the worst numbers among all exit polls, Yogendra Yadav was way off the mark in his regional analysis. This is sad because our national policy is held hostage by such intellectuals. The fate of our hundreds of million of poor depend on the competence of such men.

This election was really a victory of facts and data over rhetorics, as blogger RealityCheck pointed out. Actually modify that to "raw data" because by the time the data reaches you through the secular prism, it is bent beyond recognition. The truth is that the secular media went so far in its relentless carpet bombing that the public became thoroughly disengaged. This must be the wet dream of any incumbent chief minister, a fact not lost upon his campaign manager when he conducted his own surveys (which were far more accurate than the CNN-IBN exit poll, to say the least):

One face and name that summed the contrast with a pan-Gujarat appeal was Narendra Modi himself. Our opinion polls confirmed that Modi's approval ratings, among the cross-section of voters, were a double-digit more than that of the BJP.

The high impact campaigns were run mostly on Gujarati channels and local dailies. Congress meanwhile concentrated on the likes of CNN-IBN and NDTV and of course, Tehelka. So, why did these channels alienate Gujaratis so much? Simple, a lack of respect.

MR MEHTA told me a simple and quite stunning thing: To understand Gujarat, understand Gujaratis first, there is nothing that matters more to them than dhando and dharma, business and religion. Would it be in that order, Mr Mehta? Quite, he said, what dharma are you going to do on an empty stomach? But please understand this carefully because a lot of you don’t, Gujarat is what Gujaratis make it, not what people like you want it to be, don’t fit our image to the requirements of your frame. [Sankarshan Thakur, Tehelka]

It is clear why people like Thakur can not respect anyone and must necessarily judge the world by the stereotypes and cliches they know. They do not even respect themselves.

Congress wins: Gujarati good
Congress loses: Gujarati bad

This has been the pattern endlessly repeated for 60 years. You can't win them over? Go ahead, insult them. The problem is, economic liberalization has taken away much of the stick factor. A very antagonistic Central Government can't do much damage to Gujarat, the way it did to some other states. Bihar comes to mind (yeah the whole Jayprakash Narayan - Emergency incident).

Believe it or not, some seculars actually said that it was time Kashmiri Pandits stopped playing the victim and that all their problems were related to bad governance. So, that is what you get when you elect the secular party. On two fateful days in December, Gujaratis decided that they wouldn't play the victim. As a bonus they also got good Governance! Two for the price of one! It was an offer no one can refuse, let alone a Gujarati!