Analysis of DDC election results by most of the English media in India will put common sense to shame

 

The following article was written for MyInd Makers. Pasting it here for reference:

Shekhar Gupta’s The Print told us yesterday that “Gupkar Alliance and Congress wins big in J&K DDC polls”. If you go to the link now, the word “Congress” is gone from the headline, but you can take a look at the full link name in the browser and you will see what I am talking about! Congress won a massive 26 seats out of the 280 seats that went to polls. Mysteriously, Shekhar Gupta thought this amounts to winning big!

NDTV did a show on “Analysing the Gupkar Alliance win”. News18 tells us that “Gupkar Alliance Sweeps Maiden DDC Elections With 110 Seats.  The Gupkar alliance won 110 seats out of the 280 seats that went to polls. Logic dictates that this is not even a win, leaving alone a “sweep” or “winning big” but our English media always finds ways to attribute non-existent things to elevate the Congress ecosystem.

“Poor strike rate of BJP” read the analysis in Hindustan Times. Obviously, the parties in alliance will contest lesser number of seats than parties that are not in alliance! But our English media wants to look for ways to delegitimize the electoral performance of BJP simply because they hate it.

The numbers are there for everyone to see. Contrary to popular imagination, the Congress is not a part of Gupkar Alliance. It comprises of 5 parties that won a total of ~3.9 lakh votes against the 4.9 lakh votes that the BJP won. After putting up a brave face about how the Congress is an independent organization and is not part of the Gupkar alliance, it has now announced support to the Gupkar alliance!

The BJP won 75 seats in the DDC elections. If you had read only the English media all along, you would think that the BJP will perhaps not even win a single seat. The numbers won by each party can only lead to one conclusion of these results – this is as fragmented a verdict as one can ever get. The verdict is reflective of the ground reality in J&K regarding the various issues that are impacting the people.

The BJP is elated because it was written off in the media, yet the ground reality is that there is considerable support for the party in J&K. The Gupkar alliance seemed to have worked more in the favour of the National Conference than the PDP. What else explains the fact that PDP won 27 seats despite getting only a partly 55,000 votes (some of which are votes from other parties of the alliance). The Congress is definitely not a “big winner” here (I can’t believe this actually has to be said!). This severe loss of face for both the PDP and the Congress is perhaps more reflective of the regressive politics of these two parties. But then it is also too much to expect the current Congress party to learn anything from electoral verdicts.

The oft repeated phrase of “In the end, democracy won” is very apt to these elections. A free and fair election was seen as a distant dream for the people of J&K. Democracy can only win once multiple elections like these are conducted peacefully and the people get the governance they voted for. Not through the barrel of the gun or through the speeches of azadi. Article 370 restricted the access to many schemes that the people of India enjoyed. With everything now opening up, it is up to the people to lap them up and vote according to how they are indeed getting benefitted.

The alleged analysis and interpretations of election results by most of the English media in India will put common sense to shame. From the advent of the phrase “moral victory” to even calling the victorious as the losers, these alleged analysts have decided to give up on all sense of objectivity while writing about the results.