Tuesday Titbits

Some interesting news stories on this Tuesday of Oct 2019.

1 So state elections in Maharashtra and Haryana got over yesterday and immediately after the completion of polling process, all the TV news channels started airing the findings of their Exit Polls, and the panel of experts started discussing about the outcome of various Exit Polls. One thing was very clear from Exit polls was that in both the states BJP will come back to power once again. In  Haryana the various Exit Polls are predicting, that in a house of 90 seats, BJP will win  70 to 77 seats. If you take out average of all exit Polls then BJP will be getting 73 seats out of 90. It means that they will win more than 80% of the seats, which implies that there will not be any opposition worth its name in Haryana assembly.

Now coming to Maharashtra, the various polls have predicted 210 to 244 seats for BJP/Shiv Sena alliance, the average of all the polls will give 212 seats to BJP/Shiv Sena. And the same polls predicted that BJP alone will get from 125 to 144 seats in the house of 288 seats. In 2014 BJP contested on all seats with no alliance with Shiv Sena and they got 124 seats, and because of alliance with Shiv Sena this time BJP contested about 164 seats and if they win even 125 seats, then the victory conversion rate will be minimum 76 %, which is a fantastic figure. In the out going assembly BJP/Shiv Sena combine had a strength of 185 seats, and Congress/NCP  combine had 83 seats. In yesterday’s various Exit Polls, the prediction gives Congress/NCP seats ranging from 39 to  90 seats, and average of all polls works out to be 63 seats.

Now if the figures of Exit Polls become the reality, then it is going to have a major blow to the main opposition party ie Congress. In Maharashtra and Haryana both, this will be the first time a Non Congress party is winning the successive elections. Actually the fact is, in both the states there was hardly a presence any political party who could challenge the BJP. As per the prediction of Exit Polls of Maharashtra, Congress which has ruled the state for almost 50 years after its formation, will come at No. 4 position  as far as number of seats are concerned, BJP is going to be top party followed by Shiv Sena and NCP. A complete reversal of situation from 1999 when Congress was at the top followed by NCP, Shiv Sena and BJP.

Congress is going to face big trouble in Maharashtra, as the party is having  a total vacuum at the top level. There is serious in house fighting between various senior leaders, and in this elections there was no number 1 leader in Maharashtra who could have controlled and coordinated with leaders and grass root cadre. All the senior leaders were themselves trying to safeguard their own constituencies, and hence there was no coordination in the poll strategy. Secondly Congress President Sonia Gandhi never addressed any election rallies. Even Rahul Gandhi, who was missing in earlier part of campaign addressed few rallies during last 10 days of campaign, but he had not learnt a lesson from the earlier defeat in Parliament elections, he was still talking about Rafale, BJP govt is corrupt and other non relevant issues. For NCP it was only Sharad Pawar who campaigned single handedly. In comparison BJP had stalwarts like Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and Devendra Fadnavis who campaigned, and for them issue was development for all,  article 370 and other relevant issues. Shiv Sena had father and son duo Udhav and Aditya Thackerey.

It looks like BJP dream of Congress free India, has taken one step more in that direction, with Congress becoming non relevant in Maharashtra politics, with no revival in sight in near future. It is going to be pathetic situation that 130 years old party is slowly fading out from Indian polity. In my opinion unless Congress do not any revamp now, it is going to be very difficult for them to stage a come back. Secondly they have to give a serious thought about whether their philosophy and ideology is relevant in present times. Apparently there does not seem to be any thing wrong with their ideology but the same ideology need re packaging so that the modern generation can feel that it is good for the nation, simply criticising policies/ideology of BJP is not going to give results, because today’s generation can understand the language of Narendra Modi/Amit Shah and other leaders of BJP, people have feeling that what they say they deliver or at least make an attempt in that direction. Secondly these opposition parties like Congress have to realise that religion and caste base politics have no place in present day Indian polity, sooner they realise it will be better for them.

2 South Africa (SA) has tamely surrendered to India in 3 test cricket series. Even the last test they have lost by an innings, like the 2^nd test. None of the 3 tests lasted for full 5 days. A cricket team like SA who had a number 1 ranking few years back will face this humiliation was never thought of. Even in One Day World Cup few months back, they were hot favourite to reach the finals but they did not even qualified for knock out stage.

The present Indian cricket team has proven themselves at home and overseas matches in both test and limited over cricket, that they have strong team with enough bench strength in all formats of game, and it has become a normal thing in Indian cricket that if you do not perform then there at least 2 to 3 players who are ready to replace you. There are only few players who can take their place in the team for granted, all other players have to perform consistently to be in team, few failures and you are out of the team as your replacement is ready in the wings.

Waiting for your comments/views/feed backs on this blog.

Anil Malik

Mumbai, India

22^nd Oct 2019