R JagannathanFirstpost.com
Whichever way you look at it, you have to doff your Gandhi cap to the canniest voter of them all: the humble Maharashtrian.
For, if the exit pollsters haven't goofed up, the results of the assembly elections - due this Sunday - will be the most extraordinary of them all.
Consider what the voter was presented with at the start of the election process: two acrimonious divorces and a bewildering array of singletons with no particular claim to attractiveness. She could have chosen NOTA in sheer frustration, but she turned out to be smarter: she celebrated one divorce, dissed the other and gave scant attention to the mere spoilers.
Thus we have two divorces and three funerals - the last being that of Congress, NCP and the MNS.
First, look at the Shiv Sena-BJP last-minute divorce just before a potential honeymoon with the voter. Despite name-calling and bad blood the family court saw that this was just one of those unexpected things and told them, don't be silly. The voter, far from rejecting one for the other or even both, gave her support to both of them. This is the only reading possible when both the BJP and Sena gained vote share - even though the vagaries of vote-to-seat conversion favours the BJP for now. The voter effectively celebrated this divorce. She gave the same verdict separately what she would have given them had they been together - around 200-odd seats combined.
Second, see the mauling dished out to the Congress and NCP, another unhappy marriage that ended in a one-sitting triple talaaq. Once again, the voter saw this divorce differently, as one driven purely by opportunism and the lust for power. She turfed both of them out with a curse: may you rot separately in hell. They are now No 3 and No 4, and will probably sink further.
Third, look at how the Maharashtrian voter treated the voyeurs in the game. The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, despite its loud Marathi manoos rhetoric, has been left exactly where it was before - but defanged and without the ability to distort the voter's message. The voter shrewdly chose the saner version of Maharashtrian pride - the Sena - and refused to split this vote.
In the process, see the ultimate message coming from the voter.
#1: The voter wanted nothing to do with the Congress-NCP (together or separate) after 15 years of misrule, facilitated largely by Raj Thackeray's vote division play. This time she said nothing doing. These guys should go.
#2: The electorate did not want to choose between BJP and Sena - and thus voted to strengthen both - one, possibly to lead the government and the other to head the opposition.
#3:The voter has not abandoned regional issues, but does not set great store by divisive manoos rhetoric. She has bought the Narendra Modi idea that you can be a proud Maharashtrian and a proud Indian without being xenophobic. Both the Senas had brought in the anti-Gujarati theme into play, but the voter refused to cock an attentive ear to this rhetoric. She will not be distracted by non-issues.
Maharashtra may be about to send a powerful and positive message with this vote to all parties: don't mess with the voter by throwing red herrings across her path. Focus on doing your job - which is to create growth, jobs and security. The rest is crap.
Maybe, Modi gets this better than the rest. This, more than his ability to connect with speeches, is what is working for him.
The writer is editor-in-chief, digital and publishing, Network18 Group
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