Narendra Modi’s Victory Was Real, Big And Significant.

As per a common practice in a contest you should always lower the expectations. That way, you have an excuse for defeat and marginal wins. In case of a big win, you can claim modesty and come out looking like a gracious winner. A corollary to all this is that your opponent  builds up huge and unreal expectations of your victory. That way even a big victory by you looks like a defeat and his defeat a gain. Smart move by your enemy, especially if you do not counter your opponent’s expectation building scheme.

The BJP leadership was too busy with intra-party confusion that they did not pay attention to the media’s scheme of building up possibility of a huge win by Narendra Modi. Modi himself did not come out with his own estimates and left it to the pro-Congress media and other outfits with their unrealistic polls. It made Bhai Narendra Modi’s victory look like a lesser version of what it actually was. The conspiracy theorist in me tells me that this exercise was pre-planned by Congress media mavens to make Modi’s victory look small and Congress’s defeat look like a gain of some sort.

First and foremost, I must congratulate all the Congress contestants in Gujarat. They really did perform very well. They gained over 61 seats and a very significant vote percent 39 (which is much higher than their national vote percent). They did this with absolutely no achievements to show for in Gujarat and nationally except for increasing the size of scams, price, inflation, poverty etc. In fact the only thing that has gone down during Congress rule is the value of human life.

The only state with uninterrupted three terms or more is West Bengal where voters kept electing the communists until they could no more. That streak had little to do with performance and more to do with politics of manipulation. That is the reason why Narendra Modi’s third term victory is so significant. He has done so in a state where the opposition is very strong (39% votes for Congress implies that a powerful third party or a small vote flip flop could have turned the table the other way). He has done so with an overwhelming majority in the Gujarat Vidhan Sabha (comments from the Congress leaders notwithstanding). He has done so with no help from the Central government which takes a lot more in taxes than it gives back in help (drought etc.). He has done so with little to help from his own party. He has done so despite of the best efforts of a disillusioned Keshubhai Patel. He has done so in face of ten years of incessant maelstrom of negative attacks from the Congress controlled media, central government installed judiciary, false charges drummed up by NGOs and stooges like Sanjiv Bhatt. A lesser man would have folded but not him. He won a third term totally based on merit and performance. No matter what the losers like Salman Khurshid and Chidambaran say, Modi’s win was big, real and significant.

Bhai Narendra Modi has proven to be one of those “once in a lifetime” kind of leaders. I hope and pray that the Indian voters will get a chance to elect him and then vote him in the office of the Prime Minister of India. It would be nice to see a real leader adorn that seat, a seat that so far has been occupied by bit players, poseurs and frauds.