
Voters in Queue
The Election Commission has officially banned all Election Surveys till the conclusion of the polls on the first of June. Ritualistically, that is! In reality, the Indian voter has many ways to gauge the mood of voters and to hazard intelligent guesses as to what awaits us come the close of elections.
Social Media, Astrological predictions, political analysis and inferences by self-proclaimed (and acknowledged) pundits and on top of it all the satta bazar vibes tell us the course of electoral winds under formation.
I, for one, would give the least credibility to social media and the highest probability to the satta bazar forecasts. Not that I am a votary of betting. But the ownership and financial stakes of the bidders in the betting arena make their guesses the more credible of the many bellwethers around!
Of all the betting markets, the Phalodi Bazar in Rajasthan has a history of near-accurate predictions not just in politics but in sports and many other fields where people indulge in calculated risk-taking to project outcomes to make money from what they think as intelligent judgements.
The Phalodi bets have gone through a lot of zig-zag movements in the past few weeks as phase after phase of the long and winding election schedule unfolded. The tiring, boring and unusually long schedule of elections has proved an enigmatic conundrum to make any sense of the trends and twists of projections.
In the latest betting cycle, as of yesterday, with just a couple of days for the campaign to close for the final phase, the satta bazar has put the likely set count of BJP at 290, a comedown from 300 last week. The NDA might get another 30 seats.
It is possible that when the final phase is over, the tally may shrink further, although marginally.
With so much bad blood spilt along the way during the campaign and in the background of a vertical split in the social composition of this diverse land out in the open, the path forward, post the elections, looks fractious and disturbing as of now. Our society needs a healing touch and we need a neutral truth and reconciliation counselling by wise and objective minds. Who will take the lead?
These are disturbing thoughts, whatever the outcome of the elections.
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