Queerness of the Results
Mumbai: Interesting times indeed. Modi-fied BJP’s remarkable election campaign surely was fuelled by unprecedented sums of money, but more interestingly magnified by the logic of the first-past-the-post system -- which converted a 12 percentage point difference in vote share with the Congress into a 600 per cent difference in seats (NDA with 335 seats, including 282 of BJP against UPA with 61 seats, including 44 of Congress).
In the process, it has helped Modi banish, for all intents and purposes, the lingering shadows of a darker past. So detested was the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government and so terrible its record of governance that the party has justifiably suffered the worst defeat in its 129-year history.
The 'Modi Wave' still left nearly 60 per cent of the electorate cold and failed to make a major dent in those states where regional parties still enjoy a high degree of credibility with voters like Tamil Nadu, Odisha and West Bengal but it has wrecked the Congress everywhere.
The wave swept through Uttar Pradesh, where it also managed to draw away voters from the Bahujan Samaj Party if not from the Samajwadi Party, and of course Bihar too.
Taken together, MPs from national parties like Congress, the Left and the Aam Aadmi Party will barely add up to 60. Regional parties like the AIADMK, the TRS and the Biju Janata Dal, which are non-ideological, or the Trinamool Congress, which veers towards populism but is essentially Bengal-centric, are unlikely to show much interest in, let alone challenge, the Modi government on a large number of crucial areas of policymaking. And that does not bode well for the largest functional democracy of the world.
