Hindutva, Hindunasjonalisme og Bharatiya Janata Party En ...

In Madhya Pradesh, where Diggy Raja had been ruling for ten years and had "bowled a
googly" against Uma Bharat, he was very sure of winning for the third time. But out figures
showed a whopping 167 seats for the BP. Even in Chhattisgarh, where the media had entirely
written off the BJP ("no leader, no Chhattisgarhi-speaking party functionary" and the
"unchallenged" leadership of Ajit Jogi) the Party was likely to win 45 seats.
So, General Secretary Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi conveyed to us to publish these assessments on
the four-coloured cover page of the BJP TODAY in the form of graphics. Our printer Vikas
Deshmukh did a wonderful job, and on November 27 or 28, 2003, four or five days before
polling date, we distributed the copies to the correspondents attending the daily briefing at 3
p.m. at the party headquarters.
One should have seen the faces of our colleagues on receiving the copies. Ridicule writ large
on their faces, most of them did not even take the trouble of going through the story. One
kindly soul had asked Naqviji if he had "cooked up", the figure merely for the sake of
consolation since certain defeats were staring the party in its face.
Well, we proved wrong in Delhi. But in Rajasthan, the actual result of Vasundhara Raje. In
Madhya Pradesh, Uma Bharati's leadership was blessed with 174 seats, seven more than the
figure quote on the BJP TODAY cover and in Chhattisgarh, the tally was 50 in a house of
90%.
So, in case of the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP's "friends" saw that it was "unstoppable" and
the NDA would romp home just like in the December 2003 polls for the State Assemblies.
The India Today opinion poll had confirmed this trend.
So, "secular" brains got to the launch one of the biggest game of obfuscation in any Lok
Sabha election and on the morrow of the Exit Poll results on the first day's voting on April 20,
one particular television channel came out with an "opinion poll" which created the spectre of
instability in the country after May 13, the day counting created by this "opinion poll", that
the stock market in Mumbai crashed by 213 points in one day and even BJP and NDA
workers were taken aback by this poll, the results of which were prominently carried as a first
lead in one English language newspaper which hopes for the revival of the Soviet Union, no
less. Political observers could not have missed this juxtaposition.
In this context, it will be desirable for some of our young colleagues in the profession to
undertake a study, or to use a more sophisticated term, the de-mystifying of the "science" of
"opinion poll" and exit polls. It has to be realised that even the most trusted of these exercises,
the "Gallup Polls" of the United States, is only 20 years old. The "science" is yet to be
perfected and there are so many avenues for introducing bias, for or against, particular
political parties in these polls, that the study would open the eyes of even the sophisticated,
yet credulous people.
Without being partial to fellow professionals, one feels that only hardworking journalists
speaking to people in cities as well as villages, and analysing past trends from official
statistics, can predict election results more accurately in areas they cover. Only, and this is
fundamental, before embarking upon such surveys, journalists concerned music have a
"Ganga-snan", that would wash away all traces of bias for and against any political party in
their minds.
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