Unpreditable before, Predictable later
By Murli

Elections may be an unpredictable business, but what follows them are utterly predictable. Let’s begin with the exit polls forecast by various TV channels. Predictably, they fail to predict the results right. For example, Rajdeep Sardesai in CNN-IBN declared in his usual can’t-be-wrong style that the Punjab elections was a dead heat, with Uttaranchal only slightly tilting towards saffron. The hint: Congress would manage to escape the wrath of the people. The other channels too got it wrong, proving that exit polls are nothing but marketing gimmickry.

Next the soundbytes from the winners and losers are like a never-ending echo from the past. The outgoing Punjab CM Amrinder Singh said “we will be a constructive opposition”. Yawn. The incoming CM Parkash Singh Badal says “we will not follow the politics of vendetta”. Zzzzzzz. Well, what do you expect to hear? That “we will be a destructive opposition” or that “we will go baying for his blood”. A murderer never advertises his intent, an accomplice never reveals where the body is hidden.

Like elections, the budgetary exercise too brings in a sense of déjà vu. Unpredictable, when it is being presented (even this is debatable), but utterly predictable afterwards. For the opposition, the budget is like a red rag, and a pointer to Apocalypse. For the ruling party, it is Deliverance Day. The business community accepts or rejects the budget depending on where they are coming from – pro-government/pro-reforms or anti-government/reforms. The TV channels, predictably, try to milk the maximum out of the budget (like in their coverage of the elections) because every news event is for them a battle-ground for more eyeballs. And so, predictably, they hype up the budget, the elections, or for that matter, any news-of-the-moment, and make it sound unpredictable, and so, interesting to the eyeball (just so, they can have a ball!).

So where does the truth lie? Predictably, somewhere in between? Or simply unpredictable? It’s a tough predicament, and the safest bet would be to say it lies somewhere in between. It’s not as unpredictable as the TV channels would have you believe, and neither as predictable as the political respondents make it out to be. The best way to get to the bottom of the story is to ignore the bits and bytes on print and the idiot box and get a taste of the truth in the chai addas and coffee shops. So go smell the coffee and know why the aam aadmi is given the go by, that too, in an election year…