How was Mamata Banerjee’s TMC ‘decimated’, ‘demolished’ and ‘defeated’ by the BJP in West Bengal?
Here are 10 factors for the BJP’s win, seven reasons for Mamata’s loss, and all the data that AI or the human mind can generate for you to play psephologist.
The Muslim vote was divided by 10 per cent, the women’s vote for the BJP grew by 85 per cent, the BJP’s vote share in Greater Kolkata increased by 8 per cent, Hindutva accounted for 25 per cent (although it was 22 per cent in the South and 3 per cent less in the North) and double engine sarkar promise appealed to 67 per cent of voters. And what about Modi’s magnetism? Well, that’s incalculable.
Got it? Of course you haven’t. While this was a ‘mock’ example, it sums up the news media’s dependence on data to explain the election results.
Television news channels with their magic screens and newspapers with their fine print flooded us with numbers, charts, graphs, percentage points, and colourful maps—all presented in convoluted sentences. This drowned the election results in a sea of details.
You don’t believe me? Here are some examples.
The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) saw “Ineligible’ voters exceed win margins in 25 BJP seats’ (The Economic Times), but ‘TMC won 13 out of 20 seats with highest voter deletions’ (The Indian Express).
“The net SIR deletions in the state are 8.9 million, of which 2.7 million were deleted during the adjudication process…the decline in votes polled by TMC is close to at least the adjudication deletions,” reported Hindustan Times (‘Did SIR exercise win West Bengal for the BJP?’)
In other words, it is “tempting to believe that SIR could have played a role in the BJP’s victory in West Bengal…” HT added, and then spent the rest of the article explaining how ‘SIR could not have won the Bharatiya Janata Party the state of West Bengal…”
Another example from The Hindu: “As of 8 pm on Monday, the ruling party at the Centre had won 102 of the 293 assembly seats for which votes were counting and was leading in another 104, a tally of 206, more than two-thirds of the Assembly, relegating AITC to a distant second with 44 wins and lead in 37 more, a combined 81” (‘Rural sweep, urban gains hand BJP a decisive win over Trinamool’).
By the time you’ve figured out one set of figures, you’re assaulted by another.
The news media is making readers and viewers do a lot of work. Why not just give us the last paragraph first: “In sum, the BJP conquered West Bengal by sweeping the agrarian South West, doubling its lead in Greater Kolkata, Hindutva consolidation, a fracture in AITC’s Muslim base, and Dalit support.” (The Hindu)
This we understand.
Beyond Bengal
The same minute detailed analysis was done for the Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam and Puducherry election results. Newspapers packed in everything they could think of on special pages for each state on May 5. So much so that by May 6, there was almost nothing left to say, barring Mamata’s ‘loot’ allegations.
Once you tore yourself away from trying to ‘figure’ out the results, there was some plain thinking and plain speaking too in the news media.
According to television news, the BJP won because of ‘Modi magic’, ‘Modi’s wave’, ‘Kamal ka Kamaal’, and for variation ‘Modi ka Kamaal’, a heavy seasoning of ‘saffron power’, and the BJP riding high on ‘Ashwamedha ghoda’.
Together, these elements ‘shattered’ Mamata’s ‘Maa Mati Manush’ formula and her aura of invincibility. Yaani ki, ‘BJP’s aandhi blew away TMC’ (Aaj Tak).
Leading newspapers were equally eloquent and full of puns: ‘BJP wave sinks Mamata (The Indian Express); ‘MamaTa-ta’ (The Tribune); ‘BJP’s Bengal’ (The Telegraph, Kolkata) ‘Khela Khatam’ (Jansatta), ‘Chhaa gaya Babumoshay’ (Dainik Bhaskar) and The Times of India’s ‘BJP is Bengal’s Janata’s Party’.
The “shocker” in Tamil Nadu with Joseph Vijay Chandrashekhar ending what TV news channels called the ‘Dravidian duopoly’ provided us with the best headline of all: ‘How Joseph beat Stalin’ in The Times of India. (Joseph Stalin led the Soviet Union between 1924 and his death in 1953).
Everyone delighted in the ‘superstar’ of cinema and now a ‘blockbuster’ politician: ‘A Star is Born,’ wrote Times Now. ‘Actor Vijay steals the show in TN blockbuster,’ wrote The Tribune.
There were profiles galore such at HT’s ‘From screen to state: Vijay’s scripted rise’ and TOI’s ‘A star is born in TN politics: Quiet, introverted, persistent’.
As in the case of West Bengal, we had plenty of figures to get through and a lot of analysis too. The Indian Express tried to explain every angle of Vijay’s victory in ‘Vijay’s charisma, urban unrest, fall of Dravidian majors—key takeaways of landmark verdict’.
Assam and Kerala received a little less space on television news, although Republic TV and Times Now did interview Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma. It was hard to tell who looked more pleased during the conversations: the beaming anchors, Arnab Goswami and Navika Kumar, or the BJP leader.
And speaking of looking pleased, Times Now anchors on May 4 celebrated the BJP victory in West Bengal with a `Masala Mandate’ food stall in the studio. On live television, they proceeded to chomp on some jhalmuri.
By the way, TV news has plenty of competition now. Besides news websites like ThePrint, The Wire, Scroll, The News Minute, Newslaundry, and a specialised app like DeKoder, newspapers are now doing their own live video shows on the results.
Hindustan Times had an anchor with guests just like TV news, The Hindu had a magic screen with numbers galore, and The Indian Express had discussions with its political team.
What the editorials said
Commentary on the results were pretty much of the same opinion: As the Business Standard editorial, ‘Promise and Delivery’ wrote: ‘… the principal message from the results…is that the voters are looking for change. It also said that the controversial SIR exercise “did not play such a critical role in the election outcome”.
The Indian Express editorial headline says everything: ‘Verdict’s frame people’s push for change – BJP seized that impulse, rivals paid for standstill’. The edit said that the “binding theme’ of the elections is “BJP’s growth and spread beyond its traditional bastions… (and) the declining fortunes of its political opponents.”
The Times of India agreed: ‘BJP’s Bharat Jodo Yatra’ map shows how BJP now rules in 22 states across India—that’s 80 per cent of India’s population.
In other words, ‘Sunset for Satraps’ (Hindustan Times).
The Telegraph looked into the future of the BJP and saw Amit Shah’s stars burning bright (‘Who after Modi? Shah gets a Bengal sheen’) and Times Now Navbharat replayed Shah’s speech in which he said, “Didi ta-ta goodbye.”
The author tweets @shailajabajpai. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant Dixit)