This thought had struck me more than a year ago, when I saw this particular television advertisement. Then the ad slowly disappeared from TV screens. However, I saw it again during the recent India-England cricket series. So hitting a mauke pe chauka, I thought to pen my thoughts finally.
First, take a look at the ad: Continue reading
In May 2014, Narendra Modi recorded an unprecedented victory in the history of contemporary India. I have deliberately called it a Modi victory rather than a BJP or NDA victory, because it indeed was victory of a personality called Narendra Modi.
While hardly anyone gave Congress any chance of it returning to power, and people talked about Modi wave, no one knew about this Modi tsunami that would strike the pollsters, some “intellectuals”, and of course, the Congress party.
People just couldn’t stop talking about 2014 after the results were out. Well, even otherwise it was a hotly debated election, but the results made it burning hot. How it happened, why it happened, does this change India forever, and all kinds of things were discussed.
Whether Modi haters or his ‘bhakts’ – both love to go back to the last general elections, and remind or warn each other that it will repeat or it will not repeat in 2019. Books were written and are still being written about the 2014 elections.
It’s been around 30 months now, but it appears that most people can’t get over the 2014 verdict yet.
Except one man – Narendra Modi himself. Continue reading
Indian National Congress, the grand old party of India, suffered its worst ever electoral defeat in May 2014. Reduced to 44 seats, it was staring at a risk of being pushed to the margins if immediate corrective steps were not taken.
The reasons for its defeat were pretty obvious – corruption charges, anti-incumbency, lackadaisical leadership of Rahul Gandhi, and Modi wave.
However, if you analyze them as a pragmatist, these reasons don’t warrant any “corrective” step. They are transient in nature. For example, Congress could simply shrug them off with the following responses, and the party won’t really be wrong: Continue reading
Consider what every Modi hater would say about Narendra Modi a couple of years ago:
Now consider what many BJP supporters say about Arvind Kejriwal of late:
Does it sound like Arvind Kejriwal is on his way to become the next Prime Minister of India after winning Delhi thrice, just like Modi won Gujarat thrice earlier? And, well, technically he has won Delhi twice already!
The BJP has to realize that the “bhagoda” Kejriwal is here to stay for the long race. They can continue to reject him like Modi haters used to reject Modi, and thus help Kejriwal become the next Prime Minister of India, or analyze this phenomenon and learn their lessons.
In this article, I try to analyze what made Kejriwal click with Delhi’s audience and why BJP’s strategies failed.
“People voted for Narendra Modi because they wanted development, they didn’t have any Hindu agenda in mind.” is the latest muse of people who earlier religiously believed that “a vote for Modi means crossing the moral point of no return”.
They are the same people who thought that Modi, with help of Amit Shah, “polarized” Uttar Pradesh to sweep the general elections. Now they think that the elections were won on development agenda.
This U-turn by these alleged “intellectuals” is not surprising as they are experts in shifting goalposts; however, what is consistent are their generalizations.
Earlier a vote for Modi was a vote for fascism, and now a vote for Modi has become a vote for development.
This post is not to analyze what a vote for Narendra Modi meant, because many alleged journalists are analyzing that by writing fat books, hoping to make a fat impression and preferably fat money.
This post is about who voted for Modi. Continue reading