(Kumar Ketkar is a senior journalist, political commentator, globe trotter and author. He has covered all Indian elections since 1971 and significant international events. He is a frequent participant on TV debates.)
Till, February 10, most of the print media published stories with headlines declaring a neck-and-neck fight in Delhi. The elite English TV channels also echoed that line, forecasting a "photo finish" or predicting that the BJP would score between 38 and 41 of a possible 70 seats.
Even the bookies (safe to assume these were Gujarati satta operators) said a day before results were counted that after "carefully studying" the opinion polls, they believed the BJP had "recovered immensely."
Each member of the Modi Brigade, some of them even flown in from US, was given booth-wise responsibilities. Social media, which was the main vehicle of the Sangh Parivar in the Lok Sabha election, was re-orchestrated by the Sangh Aparatchiks, as they had realized that it was dominated by AAP volunteers. U.S.-trained management experts who had choreographed the Tea Party campaign and Romney propaganda machine in America in 2012 were positioned to coordinate the Delhi cyberspace.
Indian diplomats from nearly 120 countries were specially invited to Delhi, presuming glorious victory in the election, so they could go back to their missions abroad, impressed and inspired by the miracle called Modi. But like in Stalingrad in 1941-42, every household joined the electoral war to defeat Modi-Shah's Panzer divisions.
The celebrated columnist Surjit Bhalla, as my keen media watcher friend noted, put the AAP victory down to social disharmony - last month though (on Jan 24) he had written a profound analytical piece saying that a loss for BJP was impossible. AAP was not going to win more than 21 seats. Did social disharmony really set in over the last two weeks? Tavleen Singh purred that nothing much has really changed. Astonishing, no? What happened to the huge aspirational class, and the vast upwardly mobile urban community which Shekhar Gupta used to see in the BJP victory? The middle and higher middle class joined the ranks of the jhuggi jhopri walas to throw out the invading saffron armies. Their simple aspiration was to call the Modi bluff. And they did. Chetan Bhagat was eloquent in his post-facto wisdom.
This was a loss, pure and simple. The General and strategy failed. Let it rest at that.
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