Two weeks before India’s election results were announced, I shared with a few friends an estimate of the seats the NDA would win, based on my casual conversations with reporters and analysts in different parts of the country. The numbers ranged from 240 (the more pessimistic) to 320 (the most optimistic), with an average of about 280-290 seats for the NDA. The common consensus was that the NDA was likely to be returned to power, albeit with a reduced majority in comparison to the last time.
And then, arrived the exit pollsters — the T20 specialists (to use a cricketing analogy), gold plated auctioneers of dreams — with their fanciful radical assumptions, possibilities and predictions. The elections resembled a cricket test match series that had stretched for over a month, and then arrived short-form T20 specialists who figured that it would take them one day — a mere Saturday — to send the entire country on an emotional tailspin of seismic expectations or devastating forebodings, depending on which side you rooted for. And then Monday arrived, like T20 IPL auctions, when the pessimists made money while the gullible waited for Tuesday trading markets to double outcomes.
And like most T20 versions, the country realised that there was no alternative for test match cricket — ie. the actual count of votes . The runs scored was the difference at the end.
The outcome wasn’t outrageously one-sided, yet gave both sides an equal result. The NDA, the majority to govern; an.
