Facts & fakes of poll prediction

Free Thinker *

Voting for Inner Manipur Parliamentary Constituency for 17th Lok Sabha election at Imphal on 18 April 2019 :: Pix - Shankar Khangembam

One RSS leader cum friend asked me, what is the likely result? I said NDA may come back to power with a reduced number. He retorted that BJP alone is crossing 300. Then I politely rebuked him ,”then your query was redundant”. Then he laughed.

These days all the mobile phone users are suffering from fake news and doctored videos with regard to the national election. Social media has become hyper active; it becomes too difficult to identify which one is the fact, which is one is less reliable and which one is bogus? We are really confused and confounded.

Amidst this one more chaos is created by predicting the election result by every Tomba Chaoba and Hongba. But I really enjoy this chaos. You may also join me.

Wiki-pollster has compiled the poll predictions or surveys conducted by the Mafia houses sorry Media houses and poll companies (psephologists). According to that compilation one big media house along with a prediction company says NDA will get 279, UPA 149 and Others will get 115. G says it will be 264 NDA, 165 UPA, and 114 Others;

One Hindi Channel predicts that NDA 310, UPA 122 AND Others 111; R & C-Voters stands by 264 NDA, 141 UPA and 138 Others.

The final result of the ongoing parliamentary election will be finally out on 23 May. Then within a week or so a new government will be formed on the basis of the mandate given by the people of this great country which is also the biggest democracy of the world.

But for me the most interesting part of this election is the poll predictions form various quarters including the street foretellers.

Once upon a time I did a poll prediction for the State-Assembly election and it was published in a daily now vanished ; it was in the early 90’, I don’t remember the year; my prediction came out almost correct; my survey was very simple, late in the evening I spoke to some prominent drinkers who were apolitical hailed from different districts/constituencies in person or over the phone; all of them were frank and truthful after 3 or 4 pegs, they gave me full idea about the pulse of the people and the prospects of the contesting candidates.

That kind of survey was highly flayed by the then editor though profusely appreciated the result. In our State everyone is winning; CPI says they are winning; Congress says they are the victors ; BJP claims that they are certainly coming out with flying colors; Kaiku says he will get through; NEIDP thinks they can win; NPF calculates that they are invincible in the hills; NPP indicates that they will decide the winners; MPP may demonstrate that they are still strong; In fact there will be no losers .

I believe they all are winners because they come forward to serve the people and to represent the State in Dilli. We must appreciate their courage, dedication and commitment. Chouba says if it were us it would have been a convincing victory; still we have a fair chance to win; party worked hard for the outer also but let us see which gun is more sophisticated; one is almost certain , we may scrap through with the other too. At the center we are coming back; there may be some numerical problem but it will be sorted out.

We have experts in numerology; in the last NDA avatar we somehow managed the collision (coalition); sometimes we had to run to Chennai and on some occasions we had to rush to Kolkata; but we had special flights and envoys for any kind of eventuality. Our experience before the India shinning era would help us to run any multi-party government.

Ibo says Congress is certainly winning in Manipur as well as in India; for the State we have given the best candidates, it is up to the people to choose them and send them to Dilli; experience in governance is very necessary for lobbying at the center particularly for funding and debt management. We were left only with 44 in the last battle.

That was because of some tsunami; this time there is no tsunami or wave; this Fani may affect Odisha or Bengal , but people were already evacuated. So, there is harkly any impact . In any case we will get more than the last figure; it is a win-win situation for us.

Joy murmurs whether our party or their party , party is party , we are running a party and they are also running a party; A party or B party , party is party; one party may win this time another party will win next time ; we are in party politics, party needs us, without our participation , party can’t exists; party needs us more than we need the party; we are for the party.

Actually, common people are fed up of parties but we love parties. The best party is the Cocktail party. A fake poll survey report is in wide circulation among the gullible people in the social media - it predicts that NDA will get 206 and UPA 205 and others get 132. What is surprising is that they also made state wise predictions; for Manipur it is 1 : 1.

Perhaps the fakers don’t understand the ground reality of the State. By chance if UPA gets 206 and NDA gets 205 will Raisana hills invite 206 to form the government or wait for a more reliable figure to emerge in the post result scenario. Let us wait and see the greatest theatrics of Indian Democracy.

This time BBC (Bharat Broadcasting Corporation) prognosticates that only one party will form the government and there will be no need of any coalition; mandate will be crystal clear; a Nationalist party will win hands down. Reacting to this news the oldest nationalist party responds, we are winning. The ultranationalists are giggling.

Soothsayer- “Opposition is the winner but it will be BJP government “.