The favourite question during election times consists of three words: “Who is winning?”. The runner-up query is a little longer: “Who are you voting for?”
Both lines of inquiry lead nowhere: nobody really knows who will win—and by what margin—for all the poll punditry in the media or at the chaiwala’s stall. And voters—you and I—are reluctant to disclose which party will get our ‘keemti vote’. And why should we? It’s also possible that many of us may still belong to the category of ‘Undecided’.
A more rewarding exercise, perhaps, is to set out across the country to discover what people have and what people want.
For instance, in Kakrahiya, one of the villages Prime Minister Narendra Modi has adopted in his Lok Sabha constituency of Varanasi under the Saansad Adarsh Gram Vikas scheme, people want water. They are “…tired of erratic water supply and irate about the non-functional tank looming overhead”.
At Rawal, a village in celebrity MP Hema Malini’s Mathura constituency, residents like Totaram are satisfied with ‘pucca’ roads but unhappy with “…open drains and piles of garbage on the road…”
Plenty of such anecdotal evidence fills the election reports of ThePrint.
“I say to the reporters, I don’t want to know who is winning or losing. Tell me people’s stories, how things have changed or not changed, on the ground,” said DK Singh, Editor, Politics, when I asked him to define ThePrint’s election coverage. “Spot smaller trends to look at the larger picture.”
This Readers’ Editor column follows ThePrint’s reporters, to see how they have tried to capture that “larger picture” through local stories. We still have a long way to go—polling is over in only two of seven phases as of today—and there’s much that still needs to be uncovered. However, after reading more than 100 election stories on our website, I have a much clearer idea of “the mood” of people, 10 years after Modi first came to power in 2014.
Also read: Manipur clashes coverage was ThePrint’s most important journalism in 2023
Range of stories
In this discovery of India, ThePrint has as many as 20 to 25 reporters trudging across the country in 40°C+ heat. On average, 40+ election stories are being published each week, not including videos. Videos are often more popular than written stories, because as Nisheeth Upadhyay, Editor, Operations, told me, “People are choosing to watch and listen more and more…” in these times of everything on the go.
The reports come from all over the country beginning with Ladakh in the north and Kishanganj in Bihar, which is close to Nepal. As I write this on 27 April afternoon, I can see stories from Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Jharkhand and West Bengal on the home page.
There’s a dizzying range of stories—after a deep dive into the family feud between former finance minister Yashwant Sinha, an Opposition supporter now, and his son, BJP’s Jayant Sinha in Jharkhand’s Hazaribagh, you travel to Punjab where jailed separatist Amritpal Singh’s family announced his candidature for the elections.
Snehesh Alex Philip, Deputy Editor and hub editor for all election coverage at ThePrint has his hands full, sorting through the volume of stories that ping his e-mail each day. He admits that early on there was confusion and a backlog of stories. “Now we’re more on track,” he said.
My own reading is that some stories could be tighter and shorter, so that the focus is sharper.
This is ThePrint’s second general election. In 2019, the website was still new and the reporting team small. Manasi Phadke, Deputy Editor, who oversees coverage in the West and the South, had also covered the previous general election for ThePrint. She thinks the 2024 coverage is “much better organised…with more planned ideas”.
“There’s multi-media efficiency now,” she said.
Also read: Criticism, kindness, complaints—ThePrint readers don’t hold back. And we don’t want them to
Breaking down dynastic politics
What will you get to read ThePrint’s Bharat darshan? “No straight and insipid ‘constituency profiles’,” says Upadhyay.
“The focus was clear: do things differently, write about change,” said Moushumi Das Gupta, Deputy Editor, who’s just returned to Delhi, after travelling through Odisha.
She cited her story from Puri as an example: It discusses the recent beautification of the renowned Lord Jagannath temple’s premises and the development work, and then pivots to Lord Jagannath’s enduring appeal. It assesses the impact of the Ram Mandir Pran Pratishtha in Ayodhya on the local population and what that means for the main contenders—BJD and BJP.
She also discovered that in Odisha, the BJP is up against the past and the legacy of BJD’s founder, Biju Patnaik.
Another perfect example is stories from Jammu and Kashmir after the abrogation of Article 370. These tell you things have changed and what delimitation of constituencies means for political parties.
Then there’s this detailed description of a battle for Baramati that pretty much explains the feud between NCP patriarch Sharad Pawar and his nephew Ajit Pawar.
Want to know all about the appeal of dynastic and ‘parivarvaad’ politics in India: there’s the Sorens’ battle in Jharkhand, poacher Veerappan’s daughter Vidya Rani in Krishnagiri, Tamil Nadu, the Gandhis in Raebareli and Amethi, the Ansari family in Ghazipur, and Jagan Reddy’s hold over Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh.
Did you wonder why politicians are defecting from Congress all the time? Read this interview with Manvendra Singh who has switched to the BJP in Rajasthan.
There’s not enough space to mention all the stories but here are some more that readers might have missed. First up, this quaint story about a former married couple now on opposite sides of the political coin, in Bengal.
There’s this one on the crucial role of money and mining in Karnataka politics through the story of Janardhan Reddy.
What about the impact of Sandeshkhali on women voters in West Bengal? This report may be an eye-opener.
And, the importance of Lingayats in Karnataka elections becomes clearer when you read this story about the head of a Lingayat mutt contesting elections.
“We have tried to look at what is happening at the local level and ask, how does it matter to the reader—to me?” said Manasi Phadke.
Also read: How ThePrint reporters make governance, policy stories interesting for its readers
Larger trends
Travels, through different constituencies, have been at the heart of ThePrint’s coverage. But there have been reports that look at larger trends: Read this data-based story on the astonishingly high number of defectors becoming candidates in the BJP.
Or the big Kerala story in these elections after the PM’s repeated forays into the state.
We also have the BJP’s gameplan in Tamil Nadu which Modi has visited seven times, and its poll management in Uttar Pradesh.
In Kanpur, you’ll learn about the BJP’s continuing popularity despite economic woes.
From Andhra Pradesh, there’s good and bad news for Chief Minister Jagan Reddy and his YSRCP.
Following last summer’s violent unrest in Manipur, we looked at poll season in the fractured state.
In West Bengal, we considered the phenomenon of celebrities in the ruling Trinamool Congress.
And the war of attrition between the Centre and the state in Delhi gets a BJP perspective and the view from AAP’s corner.
In addition to the descriptive analytical pieces, ThePrint’s election coverage includes plenty of interviews, many on video: from Maneka Gandhi and Samajwadi’s candidate Iqra Hasan in Uttar Pradesh to VBA’s Prakash Ambedkar in Maharashtra.
There’s a good interview with Hema Malini, where she says, “My job is not to sit in people’s homes…”
I’d like to end with an anecdote which has a troubling message for journalism. During his travels through the South, DK Singh found voters to be less welcoming of the media than before. When he would tell them he’s a journalist, they’d ask, “Yes but from which party?”
Shailaja Bajpai is ThePrint’s Readers’ Editor. Please write in with your views, complaints to readers.editor@theprint.in
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)