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WHAT THE POLLS FORETELL

THERE IS NEVER any danger, it seems, of an Indian general election turning out to be a dreary and sluggish affair, not even in the most oppressive of hot seasons. Initial impressions that the 14th Lok Sabha contest would be a one horse race, with the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies romping home, have dissolved in the reasonably robust evidence that opinion and exit polls have turned up — robust certainly in comparison with impressions `from the field' and armchair punditry. There has been a plethora of polls, expressing the eagerness of multi-channel television news (acting under a combination of journalistic and marketing pressures) to make a mark, the strong supporting interest shown in election forecasting by a press that has long been intensely political, and, above all, the opportunities presented by a multi-phase gladiatorial contest involving a 670 million-strong electorate. The `intrusiveness' of pre-election public opinion polls and exit polls in the democratic process is not a new experience for political India, but this time the scale and intensity of the exercise has triggered a healthy debate on the issues and principles at stake. While firmly opposing any `ban' on the publication of opinion and exit polls as unconstitutional and arbitrary, The Hindu has recognised the importance of the objections to the practice by publishing reasoned articles and plenty of readers' letters on its editorial page.

Meanwhile in the polls, the predicted lines and numbers keep moving up and down restlessly, with most of the pollsters and psephologists seeming to take liberties with the methodology and codes of scientific polling and making out that their volatile seat predictions are a mirror of an electorate in the process of shuffling its mind and preferences. Some of the predictions of State and regional electoral outcomes contradict one another and test credibility, notably in the case of Maharashtra and Bihar. The unstated formulae for vote-share-to-seat conversion, if they exist at all, are questionable. Nevertheless, the robustness of the evidence lies in all the serious opinion and exit polls detecting what looks like an unmistakeable trend — the trend of the gap between the two major formations, one led by the BJP and the other by the Congress, narrowing relentlessly; of the growing salience of the third category of `Others', who include both the Left and strong regional players such as Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party and Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party; and of the 14th general election heading towards an indecisive and unclear outcome.

With the bluster and bombast squeezed out of the 14th general election by the polls, the uncertainties will hold great interest for the people of India, even if they do not seem, on current evidence, to have produced the "pleasant surprise" asked for on poll-eve by President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam — a 65-plus voting percentage. The interesting question is what accounts for the trend of decline in the projected fortunes of the BJP-led formation and of the tightening of the contest. This is a hard question to answer instantly but the following explanation will go some way. The bluster and hype, aided by media management, that surrounded the "India Shining" campaign came up against the ground realities of a vast, diverse and complex country and a credibility gap surfaced. It is this gap that is being shown up by the polls and exploited effectively by an unaccustomed coming together of non-BJP political parties and groups. Election 2004 is decidedly an open contest with the polls showing the BJP-led formation still ahead, but with the ground beneath its feet reportedly slipping. This represents a systemic trend that may or may not have bottomed out. Politically and journalistically all this makes for a challenging and more exciting contest, even if it scares the stock markets and dents investor confidence.

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