By Aditya Aamir
A C-Voter-Republic TV ‘National Survey’, released a couple of days ago, gives the Mahagathbandhan 50 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, if ‘elections are held today.’ There is a caveat: There should be a MGB. Well, MGB did not come gift-wrapped this Xmas, and is not likely to arrive as a New Year package, primarily because of characters like MK Stalin, who proclaimed Congress president Rahul Gandhi ‘PM face’ of the Opposition, aborting any chance Santa had of gift-wrapping MGB for GE 2019.
BSP commander-in-chief Mayawati, who like many of history’s greats goes by a single name, is extremely sensitive to such authoritarian declarations. But then, what more can be expected from a person named Stalin? Perchance, if big brother Alagiri was DMK chief, he would have announced himself PM-2019! Jokes apart, the C-Voter-RTV national survey predicts BJP+ will be ahead of opposition numbers if there is no Mahagathbandhan, i.e., if ‘Bua’ Mayawati and ‘Bhatija’ Akhilesh Yadav do not make an Aligarh-strong combination lock, in which case opposition parties will get only 38 “if elections are held today.”
Then, there is Mamata Didi. The CV-RTV survey says the BJP will get ‘9 seats’ in West Bengal. ‘Bollocks!’ erupted the Trinamool guy on the RTV panel. He should have sought to know the difference between national survey and opinion poll? ‘National’ cannot be ‘opinion’ in any dictionary – Oxford, Cambridge, Webster or Collins. Why, even Dictionary.com will baulk at drawing false equivalence. Words, they have sanctity and cannot be gift-wrapped for TRP-hunters.
Mainstream news television channels are all conclaves (and a summit) after the 5-state election results. But people have got wise to such glitzy gatherings in 5-star settings. It is all part of setting the ‘perception’. The visual media is mostly about fables told with a ‘?’ The ‘?’ put there purposely because even falsehoods have conscience! Opinion polls have sample-sizes. National surveys skim the top. At least that is the feeling.
Mainstream television media is about fleeting pictures. The ‘experts’ appearing on them every weekday evening with party and personal agenda. RTV is about which expert shouts the loudest. The same expert is soft-spoken gentleman on other screens, the transformation jarring to eyes and ears. Down south, in Kerala, RTV goes by the nickname ‘Sanghi Channel’. There are also ‘Congi’ and ‘Commie’ TV channels in ‘God’s Own Country’ and together they make the perception battleground.
Among the English language visual media, the ‘Sanghi Channel’ BARCs the most. Tamil Nadu has Sun TV and Jaya TV with Kalaignar TV thrown in for good measure. Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have a slew of Telugu news channels. Both states share a lingo and that is advantage television channels. Chandrababu Naidu and Chandrashekhar Rao may hate each other’s guts but they are in the same channel! The CV-RTV national survey says TRS will sweep Telangana but TDP will get ‘zero’ in Andhra Pradesh, where Jagan Reddy will top and Rahul’s Congress will be ‘second’. The BJP will cipher!
So, where all will BJP+ do well ‘if elections are held today’? Gujarat, Karnataka, the northeast, Bihar (Jharkhand, the Congress tips the scale), Madhya Pradesh, UP (if there is no MGB), Odisha and to an extent Maharashtra. Also in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, where it could be uphill! But the thrust of the CTV-RTV national survey is that the NDA will fall short of ‘272’. After every set of state-wise numbers displayed, the acclaimed/declaimed RTV anchor extracted a promise from each party with pre-poll alliance that it would not ditch post-poll. If that is not ‘agenda’, then the bob-cut MGB lady is bobcat PM!
Yes, GE 2019 will be fought on the plank of who will be Prime Minister 2019? There are four candidates. Narendra Modi is obvious contender and cannot be displaced though an online effort to pitch the minister for roads and highways against him went off the bend. MK Stalin wants Rahul Gandhi to be PM. Mayawati wants ‘Mayawati.’ Mamata Banerjee wants ‘Mamata Banerjee’. If Nitish Kumar “dreams to be PM”, the “mousahar Maanji” is not his ‘sarathi.” And stomach-crunching Yoga-guru Baba Ramdev says he ‘cannot tell who the next Prime Minister will be.’
Speaking in English, Ramdev said he’s not ‘supporting anybody for Prime Minister’, stating that it is a ‘fighting situation’. To add to his ambiguity, BJP ally in Uttar Pradesh Apna Dal cautioned the BJP to ‘respect allies’, especially after its ‘recent losses’. Apna Dal wants more ‘Lok Sabha seats’. Uddhav Thackeray says Modi is sleepyhead Kumbhakaran and Chandrababu Naidu said at a TV conclave ‘Modi is a negative character who ruined the economy’. Ramdev is right. There is a ‘fighting situation’ to unseat Narendra Modi from the prime minister’s chair and replacements gift-wrapped. (IPA Service)