Deconstructing the 2024 polls

It is almost a ritual. After every general election since 2014, Rajdeep Sardesai has come out with a book trying to decode the mind of the Indian electorate.

- ADITI PHADNIS

Voters have a discomfiting way of punishing those who claim to represent the club of electoral punditry. Mr Sardesai records some of that discomfiture with painful honesty, including star pollster Pradeep Gupta's tears: He, along with most psephologists, had forecast a higher than ever number for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2024 general elections and wept on national TV as the results proved him hopelessly wrong.

So why was the BJP's performance sub-optimal and how did the Opposition Congress and other parties improve their parliamentary tally? This is at the core of the book through 14 chapters with such provocative titles as "Hamare Saath ED Hai: Washing Machine Politics"; "Taali Bajao, Thali Bajao: The Covid Challenge"; "Khela Hobe: Pawar Saheb and Mamata Didi" and "Yeh Adani ki Sarkar Hai: The making of the INDIA alliance".

One of the most traumatic events in the 2019-2024 period was Covid. As well as commenting on the inadequacy of systems in preventing mass migration, Mr Sardesai records with sensitivity, the cascading effect of the meeting of the Islamic organisation, Tablighi Jamaat, which is thought to have spurred the spread of Covid, as Indian citizens who may (or may not) have attended the meeting were ostracised, attacked as "corona terrorists", and beaten up. The Indian state did little to prevent this or punish the culprits. The way Mr Sardesai tells it, holes in India's handling of Covid were glossed over by an event-management approach at which the Modi administration excels.