Why downgrade Modi? That’s Democracy

Sunil Garodia, TIR, 22 May 2014: Left leaning columnists, commentators and ‘intellectuals,’ not satisfied with having tried their utmost in ‘enlightening’ the countrymen with the frightening scenarios that could emerge if Narendra Modi was chosen to be the Prime Minister of India, have now changed tack. They are now playing with statistics to prove that Narendra Modi does not have the sanction of a majority of the people and the combined opposition got more votes than the NDA/BJP. One ‘intellectual’ even bemoaned the fact that if we had preferential or instant-runoff voting, maybe the BJP would not have won so many seats. But are these calculations not moans of people who have not understood how India has changed? They are still living in an age when any thinking right of centre was considered anti people. Now, to their discomfiture, leftist thinking is considered so. Otherwise too, their high sounding commentaries have no meaning given the fact that the elections were held as per the Constitution and the electoral laws currently in force in India.

It has to be reiterated that neither the BJP nor its allies have made the ground rules of parliamentary democracy in India. The first past the post system skews results and is often not representative of the majority view. But neither are the other systems of election. Scholars have not come to a consensus about which is the best system to follow. In India, we have been following the first past the post system. In the past 15 elections too, the party winning the mandate had never won over 50% of the votes and the combinedopposition has always won more votes than the ruling party. Let us compare the results of the last three elections (see chart). It is seen that both in 2004 and 2009, both the Congress and the UPA had got lesser percentage of votes than what the BJP and the NDA has got in 2014. But to these ‘intellectuals,’ those results correctly reflected the mood of the country and the current result does not. How blinkered can you get?

Vote Share Comparison for General Elections in India: 2004 - 2014

LOK SABHA	BJP %	NDA %	CONGRESS %	UPA %	WINNER
14th	22.2	33.3	26.7	35.4	CONGRESS/UPA
15th	18.8	24.6	28.55	37.2	CONGRESS/UPA
16th	31	37.7	19.3	23.1	BJP/NDA