INDIAN PSEPHOLOGISTS remind me of the R.K. Narayan story An Astrologer’s Day.
The astrologer, his forehead smeared with sacred ash and vermillion, sits under a tamarind tree every day on a path milling with people. Spread in front of him are cowrie shells and mystic charts. His eyes sparkle with a penetrating gleam, which was the result of a constant search for customers, but people mistook it for a prophetic light. He knew no more of the future of others than he knew what would befall him next minute. “He was as much a stranger to the stars as were his innocent customers. Yet he said things which pleased and astonished everyone: that was more a matter of study, practice and shrewd guesswork.”
He had left home suddenly without telling anyone years ago and taken refuge in a small town a few hundred miles away, and with practice developed a knack for analysing the tangles of human ties. He would ask: “Is there any woman in your family who is…?” Or say, “Most of your trouble are due to your nature. How can you be otherwise with Saturn where he is?”
Most people tended to agree with him. He never opened his mouth until the customer had given him enough clues for a dozen answers.
One evening, when he was about to wind up the day’s business, he senses a client standing in front of him and presses him to sit. The client thrusts his palm, and throws a coin and a challenge: if the astrologer fails to answer his questions correctly he must return the money with interest. The astrologer demands eight times the amount if the answers are correct, and later doubles the stake. He mumbles some mumbo jumbo and starts, “There’s a woman…”
The client asks him to cut out that nonsense.
The astrologer then asks, “You were left for dead? Am I right?”
“Ah, tell me more.”
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You were knifed, says the astrologer.
The man bares his chest and shows the scar.
“And then you were pushed into a well and left for dead,” says the astrologer.
“When shall I get at him?” asks the man.
“In the next world,” says the astrologer. “He died four months ago… crushed under a lorry.”
He asks the man to go back home and not to leave his village again, for danger lurks in his stars. The man gives him a handful of coins, and vanishes.
The astrologer goes home and after dinner tells his wife that the man whom he thought he had killed in his youth is alive. That night he sleeps well.
Delivering verdict: A woman leaves after casting her vote during the Telangana elections | AFP
As the results of the assembly election came out in December, one thing was clear: our psephologists are as credible as our astrologers. And as clueless about foreseeing the outcome of any election or the future of any politician. Most of them perhaps did not sleep well on the night of the results. Those who got it right through guesswork were lionised for their perceptive analysis of data and extrapolations of caste and freebie factors. But some of those psephologists who ventured into electoral politics themselves realised what a blind man’s buff their game of statistics was. If you hold a hot iron rod in one hand and an ice cube in the other, our statistician will tell you that your average temperature is normal. But your left hand is burnt and the right has frostbite.
They prophesied that Narendra Modi would easily win Karnataka elections, earlier this year. They bet on his charisma, his astuteness, his invoking of Hanuman and Amit Shah’s strategising brilliance. They ridiculed Rahul Gandhi as a dilettante and said he brought good luck to the BJP.
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But the Congress had a landslide victory. The psephologists failed in divining the mind of the voter.
After the Karnataka results, many left-leaning intellectuals wrote that the Modi charm has lost its lustre. They said thanks to the success of Rahul’s Bharat Jodo Yatra and the creation of the INDIA bloc, the tide is turning against the BJP. But in December the BJP rode to power even more spectacularly in three states in the Hindi belt. Most polls had given two of these states to the Congress and predicted a close finish in Madhya Pradesh, which actually saw a landslide.
Once again the cognoscenti of the election space who are masters of spin are trying in vain to unravel the googly bowled by the voter. Those leaning to the right are heralding the inexorable march of Modi to victory in 2024 elections. But they forget that the voters voted for the Congress in 2018 in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh but voted for the BJP in the Lok Sabha election in 2019.
Futile effort: Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a road show during the Karnataka assembly elections early this year | Vishnu V. Nair
They are now crying hoarse that Rahul does not have it in him to break into the BJP citadels in the Hindi heartland. And that the INDIA bloc is disparate and will dissipate, disillusioned as they are with the Congress.
If Rahul could win the same three states of the Hindi belt five years ago, do well in Maharashtra, and win Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Telangana, how can he turn incompetent overnight!
Other liberal analysts are putting forth a bizarre argument: the Congress vote share in all three states it just lost dipped only very marginally, and if you extrapolate it to parliament elections, the party will win more parliament seats. A miss is as good as a mile. It is like the pehalwan who, after being thrown in the mud, says I fell but my moustache is not soiled.
Two decades ago I contested Karnataka assembly elections from a rural constituency in Hassan. My party colleagues convinced me that I must visit the temple of a very powerful female deity before I commenced my campaign and seek her blessings, sacrifice a goat and victory was assured. I complied even though I was an agnostic. Looking at the prognosis from gods, godmen and local psephologists, and sure of victory, I began dreaming myself as a legislator. I lost miserably. I was told that candidates from the Congress and the Janata Party―one of them won―also sought blessing from the same goddess.
Only one thing is certain. None of us can penetrate the inscrutable mind of the simple Indian voter. Godmen and astrologers will continue to con us. But psephologists will do well to present only their statistical data and findings, and leave it to the voters to decide their future. They must restrict themselves to honest analysis after the people’s verdict.
As someone said, “Never make predictions, especially about the future.”
Capt. G.R. Gopinath is a soldier, farmer and entrepreneur.