Results prove there is no one wiser than the voter

Hate politics, splitting communities on religious lines and vindictive moves against fellow politicians in rival parties do not win you a mandate.

And the scale of defeat is likely to be all that more high if you ignore pressing problems like unemployment, rising prices, growing inequality and rural distress.

That’s a stern lesson the Indian electorate has clearly sent out to the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the Lok Sabha polls, the results of which came out on Tuesday.

With the BJP seeing its numbers plummeting from a comfortable 303 in the 2019 parliament polls to around 240 - a steep fall of 60 seats - and the NDA just managing to cling on to power with a seat tally of 290, it is more than obvious that the average voter is no more enthused by empty rhetoric on religious issues and India’s strides on the global horizon.

There is immense dissatisfaction among the people, both urban and rural which became manifest in the huge ‘quake’ the biggest state of Uttar Pradesh witnessed; the saffronists had the chagrin of seeing their tally slip from the 64 seats they won in 2019 to around 30, far behind the Samajwadi-Party-Congress numbers of around 45 seats.

And that has dealt a death blow to the Modi-Shah combine’s hope of even crossing the 300 seat mark leave alone ‘char sou paar’.

The elections prove that there is no one wiser than the Indian voter; they gave Modi and his government a full ten years to deliver what every Indian is eagerly looking forward to for decades – homes which do not leak, three square meals for each family member and jobs for which one does not have to wait for years and years.

When farmers - thousands of them - camped on the outskirts of Delhi with their tractors waiting for a guarantee of a minimum support price, people expected the government to treat them with empathy but instead there were tear gas shells awaiting them.

Their demands remain unfulfilled till this day with an unresponsive Central government not willing to budge a bit. When one faarmer is in distress, the pain is felt by his brethren across the length and breadth of the country for they till the same soil to reap a living.

This anger of the farmer and of many other distressed, seems to have played a role in bringing BJP leaders to their senses and remind them that power can vanish as fast as it has come to them.

The vindictive acts against leaders of the opposition also do not seem to have gone down well with the electorate. People could not help wondering why no one from the ruling combine was ever targeted.

A chastened NDA may again come to power as the Opposition does not have the numbers to make a claim for power yet. Mr Modi may again become prime minister and may even rule for another five years.

But the poll results go to prove that no longer can any party or leader, however powerful they may be, afford to ignore the opposition for they now have around 230 members in the Lok Sabha and have become a formidable force.

Consensus will have to be built on every national issue and this is a key word which seemed to have gone missing from the NDA’s vocabulary in the past five years.

The states - whether ruled by the BJP or opposition - will have to be given a patient hearing and bias should not be allowed to creep in when it comes to fund and resource allocation.

With more Assembly polls lined up for later this year, tectonic changes are waiting to happen on the Indian political scene. Democracy is in full bloom yet again and our eyes are filled with pride and hope as we wait for better times.