Defining Moments of the 2019 Election Season

The war is over. The victor and the vanquished have both accepted their destinies as though they were meant for it. The dust has settled.

There is a lot of arithmetic and number crunching that is being done, accompanied by a generous sprinkling of hand-wringing. However, an election at its core is a battle of ideas that manifests itself as defining moments and epic showdowns. If ever there was one election that was about defining moments and not dry calculations, it is this election.

Does the PM Eat Mangoes?

Searing summer. A hotly contested election. Sharp barbs are flowing hither and thither in the political battlefield. But does the Prime Minister eat mangoes?

The freewheeling interaction with Akshay Kumar that showed the human side of the larger-than-life Narendra Modi did to the election what a cool shower does to the summer. Modi’s mystique, his life story from a normal man to the world’s most popular leader, is something even the politically unaffiliated people want to know about. His conversation about himself, his childhood, his personality, his likes and dislikes and more, made waves, for this specific reason — there was a huge market for this information.

This made politically neutral people connect with the image of Modi as a person, rather than Modi the political leader. This was a coup because elections aren’t decided by what your supporters or detractors think of you but by what those who are neither, a massive chunk of the populace feels about you.

Chowkidar Federer

In a (now proven) disastrous gambit, Rahul Gandhi decided to exorcise the ‘chor’ taunt his father had to endure and somehow stick it onto Narendra Modi. Gandhi painted the town green with ‘Chowkidar Chor Hai’. He should have first produced evidence of the chori and then done the sloganeering. Emboldened by a media that propagated his brazen lies on Rafale, Gandhi thought all he had to do was shout the same thing repeatedly to ‘dismantle’ Modi’s image.

Often, in tennis, Federer and his opponent seemed to be playing normal, competitive tennis where they were fighting for their points. ‘They are evenly matched’ is what some people unacquainted with Federer would think.

However, at some point, Federer would suddenly raise his game to a different level, to the point where murmurs of ‘unplayable’ would be heard. From what looked like a competitive match at the beginning, the scorecard would show a completely one-sided performance.

Similarly, Modi replied to the campaign of calumny with a masterstroke. He owned the ‘Chowkidar’ word, rather than shun it, and invited people to be ‘Chowkidars’ along with him. He expanded the ambit of the word to anyone who wanted to protect and serve the nation in their own way. What followed was a massive show of goodwill that saw thousands of people owning the word ‘Chowkidar’ showing they stood with Modi. The ‘Chowkidar’ raised the game, and how!

Gandhi only ended up looking cheap. Add to this the apology Rahul had to offer in the Supreme Court, it was easy to see that Gandhi’s campaign had disaster written all over it.

“Never Mess with a Street-fighter”

Here’s a scene from Rocky V.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2SKXJcLhe0

Tommy Gunn comes looking for Rocky Balboa, trying to taunt Rocky to a fight with him in the ring. Tommy’s ego, however, makes Tommy himself prone to taunts. Gunn’s handler keeps telling him never to get into a street-fight with Rocky (given the TV cameras) but Gunn’s ego doesn’t heed. Gunn starts out with the advantage of age on his side, like Gandhi did in his tirade against Modi with the media on Gandhi’s side.

Some lessons, however, were served the hard way. Gandhi claimed he ‘dismantled the PM’s image’. Modi hit back with his ‘Bhrashtachari Number 1’ jibe that brought back all the memories of Rajiv Gandhi’s track record on corruption. Modi mentioned the INS Viraat episode of Rajiv Gandhi which caused further ripples on how entitled dynasts saw the country as their jagir. This hit home, with the Congress and its loyal media outlets outraging over it and only helping Modi shine the spotlight further on the First Family’s misdemeanours.

Rocky is a street-fighter at heart who has nothing to lose and so is Modi. People like Gunn and Gandhi who have a lot to lose must never mess with street-fighters.

The Overton Window Shifts

Over the last five years, Modi has often ensured that he sets the boundaries of what is acceptable discourse and what is not. He has done it with sudden verbal strikes when the Opposition ecosystem least expected it.

For example, during the UP elections, one statement on shamshaans and kabristaans set the narrative.

Then, during the Gujarat elections, Modi questioned the Congress’s delaying tactics in the Ram Mandir issue. He did it in such a way that it felt the Congress was standing in the way of something natural from happening, like trying to stop river water from flowing into another state, almost as if there was no other acceptable opinion on the way the Ram Mandir issue would pan out.

During the Lok Sabha polls, he launched an attack on the UPA which had tried to defame Hindus with the bogey of ‘Hindu terror’. He went a step further later in an interview and said Sadhvi Pragya was a symbol of what the Congress had done to an ancient, peace-loving people by slandering them.

To all above narrative-setting moves by Modi, the response from the Congress was incoherent, random and fueled by panic.

Neither such issues nor such articulation would be considered part of the rigged domain of ‘acceptable discourse’ just five years ago. But today, they are well and truly part of the mainstream public discourse, even if media outlets have tried hard to oppose this. It is simply Modi’s popularity and credibility that has made conversation on such issues possible without immediately being called ‘communal’ and shouted down.

Palaayan and Priyanka

A clear show of weakness by Rahul Gandhi was his ‘running away’ from battleground Amethi and contesting from Wayanad. While this was initially, not technically a case of escape since he did not drop Amethi, now, with the results out, we can safely call it palaayan.

Gandhi knew he would lose Amethi and hence chose Wayanad, a constituency known for its minority-dominated demographic profile. He had to ally with the Muslim League to win a seat. There are multiple messages that emerged from this move of Gandhi even at the time of this announcement notwithstanding the standard spin of ‘representing the South’.

First, think of what it would have done to the morale of the committed Congress worker, that rare species, to see his General running away from a battle on his home turf.

Second, the Congress, already battling the image of a ‘Muslim party’ has images of Muslim League flags being a part of Gandhi’s roadshow in Wayanad going viral. The effect this would have had on the Congress’s chances elsewhere can be well understood.

Third, the fracas around Priyanka Gandhi as the candidate in Varanasi to fight Modi and the subsequent denial that such a plan was ever on, too, showed confusion and cowardice in Congress’s top echelons.

That one star scion of the most powerful political family of India had to give up his home turf and use a minority-dominated constituency as a back-up, and that another star scion did not even fight an election after hinting she would, tells many stories.

Selfish, Are We?

From the day NYAY was announced, it was known that the middle class was to be the beast of burden for it. Rahul Gandhi thought he could distribute someone else’s money and ride the wave to power like others in his family, but did not say it.

Gandhi couched the question of where the money would come from in senseless rhetoric that the Nirav Modis and Vijay Mallyas would return money and their money would fund NYAY. Such money returns to banks (duh!) and not to Rahul Gandhi.

Anyway, Sam Pitroda gave the real game away by saying the middle class would fund NYAY. He also gave a lecture to the middle class on why they shouldn’t be selfish. Modi, who had until then said very little about NYAY, not wanting to make it a part of electoral discourse at all, latched onto Pitroda’s comment and attacked it mercilessly.

In this writer’s opinion, ‘selfish middle class’ was a bigger self-goal than ‘hua to hua’. Why? Because, the definition of the middle class is not just a bookish, economics-driven income number. Today, those who aspire to be in the middle class (a huge number), those who have just begun to think they are in the middle class and those who think they are the middle class — all of these people see themselves as part of the middle class! This is a massive chunk of India’s population. Calling them names and telling them your eyes are on their pockets is like waving a red rag at a bull.

“Modi Zaroor Kuch Karega”

Balakot was audacious, a new normal. While the strategic aspects of the operation have been analysed, electorally speaking, it was not a gamechanger. The gamechanger was what happened after Pulwama.

Pulwama was a national tragedy in that, there were jawans whose remains reached many states across the world. Every home, across many states into which pictures of the remains of these jawans were beamed, felt a searing pain. From it arose a cold anger.

With such anger, an angry but quiet, annoyed but assured refrain was often heard. ‘Modi zaroor kuch karega’ was heard in various languages across India. This is when people had already made up their minds that Modi was the man to guide India through these times of strife.

Balakot, Abhinandan’s return and the Opposition ecosystem’s murky games in the aftermath only firmed up the people’s belief. But the decision had been made within the people’s minds even before these events.

Khan Market Gang and the Left’s Dominance

The Left has exercised dominance of three kinds in the past. Electoral dominance, narrative dominance and institutional dominance.

A very important subtext of the 2019 election is the complete demolition of the Left’s electoral dominance in Bengal, Kerala and some parts.

There has also been a significant decline of their narrative dominance in the media. Part of it is because of the change in the political winds but a major factor is the Left’s habit of letting their loons like the Tukde Tukde Gang run amok.

Modi skillfully took apart some Leftist loon’s idea of writing in the Congress manifesto that they would remove the sedition law. In case you didn’t know, the sedition law is called ‘deshdroh kanoon’ in Hindi. Imagine Modi telling a crowd of more than a lakh people “Ye log deshdroh kanoon hataana chaahte hain”.

The Left’s narrative dominance has not seen worse days for a long time which is why we hear shrieks of ‘the atmosphere is polarized!’

Modi’s attacks on the Left ecosystem have gone viral in such a way that even politically unaware people are aware of the Khan Market Gang that calls nationalism a bad word, thinks sitting through the national anthem is no big deal, supports caste divisions in society just because it weakens Modi and wave beef fry in the face of Hindus.

The Left’s institutional dominance is also under attack which is why we hear the shrieks of ‘institutions under attack’, but it is far from over. This is where the battleground must and will move to in the future.