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WE are all wiser after the event. So don’t be surprised if over the next few weeks you are inundated with sophisticated statistical and semiotic analysis of vote shares, victory/loss margins, swings, anti-incumbency, jatiya samikaran and the like with, of course, sneery takes on ad campaigns and slogans. Somewhere, will also be slipped in, ‘Didn’t I tell you so?’ The disconcerting fact is, never publicly admitted, that no one got it right – pollsters and psephologists, astrologers and tarot card readers, politicians and grassroots activists. Economists love the phrase, ceteris paribus, everything remaining the same. For electoral number crunchers, the escape route is, ‘unless there is a wave’.

At some stage, hopefully before the next elections, we will be better informed about what seems to work, and what not, where. Is it alliances or caste/community combinations, performance or skilful public relations, constantly shuffling the candidate pack or organizational coherence and committed cadre, livelihood or emotional issues, muscle power or money – and the list can be extended ad infinitum. All what we can assert with some confidence is that Indian parliamentary elections are no presidential contest; the margin of Atalji’s personal standing did not save him from a resounding rejection. Above all that arrogance does not pay. You cannot take the Indian voter for granted.

Chandrababu in Andhra or Jayalalithaa in Tamil Nadu, Modi in Gujarat or Amarinder Singh in Punjab – each in different ways prisoners of their self-image – should now be a chastened lot. So should Antony in Kerala and Krishna in Karnataka. Everyone has his favourite looser or winner. For me, it is the physicist turned Vedic advocate, Murli Manohar Joshi. His defeat in Allahabad alongside fellow ideologues Vinay Katiyar, Chinmayananda (both in UP) and his snake sporting deputy minister from Bihar will give cheer to more than the beleaguered IIMs. For those concerned about the state of education and learning – at all levels – their departure from centre-stage creates an opportunity to undo the damage they collectively managed to inflict. When read in conjunction with the BJP losses in Gujarat, incidentally in the very same riot-affected areas which propelled it to victory in the state Assembly, it is permissible to imagine a return to sanity.

Much noise is also likely to be made about the rejection of reforms, about distorted visions and misdirected policy which foreground concerns of capital over labour, cities over the countryside and so on. This may both be premature and mistaken for there is no returning to the past. The managers of the Indian state, across political parties, and in conjunction with affected constituencies, need to re-work their reform packages with fresh centrality accorded to productive livelihood and not the stock market with its dependance on the NRI and foreign institutional investor. Equally, not with as high a component of debt.

To go back to arrogance. The unexpected decline of the NDA may well be because its spin doctors started believing their created hype. But if the Congress, clearly the major gainer of this contest, starts imagining that it is once again the central pole around which the polity operates, it is in for some shock. Not just because, in terms of numbers, it has only come back to where it was in 1996, when Narasimha Rao lost power, and that too after a herculean effort by its president. But equally because of its proclivity to treat all regionally-rooted political players as merely local and not national. This is one key reason why it has rarely been successful in working coalitions in the past and why the BJP, seen by most as more adept on this grid, lost out this time around.

India is a rainbow country and needs to be governed as such. Obsequiousness to a High Command and back-seat driving by individuals, maybe expert and well-meaning, but with no political base and experience of electoral battle, rarely succeeds in an open polity. Nor does deference to moneybags and corporate heavyweights. If the new coalition can keep its hubris in check and create meaningful space for newer and younger actors, in the party(ies) and outside, we may still see the evolution of a new political culture.

We should take some cheer from the fact that Satish Sharma, self-confessed courtier, lost from the pocket borough of Sultanpur despite vigorous campaigning by the Gandhi children and that Naresh Gujral was rejected despite his newly discovered affinity with the victorious Akali Dal in Punjab and his father’s self-propelled claims to statesmanship. Also the defeat of musclemen like Pappu Yadav and D.P. Yadav. In this lies the central lesson of 2004 – never take the voters for granted. Even more, continuously work hard at gaining and retaining their trust.

Harsh Sethi