What goes UP must come down?

Audienceelectoralrsquo democracy from a distance looks a lot like the boxoffice of movies Itrsquos primarily centred on a star The marketing push is geared towards how a political party is up for a huge haul alreadyLikewise the crores flashed in blockbustersrsquo posters Which isnrsquot to reveal how much a producerrsquos made from a movie by now Thatrsquos of no interest to the audience Itrsquos to announce how many people have watched that film So should you Itrsquos the only one playing in townWhatrsquos the assumption here That people outsource their choice to a majority If so many are voting a certain way signalling a supposed wave why bother going the other wayOnly that an election whether statenational involves multiple moviesconstituencies with its own set of unique issues somewhat homogenised by political parties fighting against each other for eyeballsvotes across geographiesWhile every movie is a Sholay before release how does anybody tell the results Pollsters seem to gauge the general direction of an election right oftenmdashnever quite the numbers Sometimes they get both wrongOr so it seems from looking at a constituency Amethi in Uttar Pradesh during one general election 2019 that journalist Anant Vijay does a deepdive account of in his book Dynasty to Democracy The Untold Story of Smriti Iranirsquos Triumph Westland translated from Hindi by Debdutta BhattacharjeeWhat was so great about BJP candidate Irani winning from Amethi in 2019 That apparently nobody had convincingly predicted She beat the Congress bossman Rahul Gandhi who she had fought against in 2014mdashentering the fray about three weeks before the vote She had narrowed Rahulrsquos victory margin in 2014 but lostAs a Union minister Vijay writes she kept returning to Amethi after the 2014 lossmdashaddressing local issues such as timely delivery of rakes of fertilisers or setting up soiltesting labs for Amethirsquos farmlandsVijayrsquos book almost entirely captures one perspectivemdashthat is the victorrsquos of course and thatrsquos how history gets written anyway Why was Iranirsquos victory symbolically historic Certain constituencies in Indiamdashlike Baramati in Maharashtra for Sharad Pawarmdashget singularly associated with a person whose traditional sway among voters is completeAmethirsquos the clicheacuted NehruGandhi family bastionfortress So much so that other GandhismdashRajmohan grandson of Mahatma Menaka wife of Sanjay who adopted Amethi firstmdashhave contested from the constituency claiming to be the lsquoreal Gandhirsquo after all They were conclusively defeated by former PM Rajiv Gandhi MP from Amethi 19811991 father of Rahul who in turn held the seat for a decade 20042014Rajivrsquos years wouldrsquove involved voting in ballot boxes upturned mixed and then counted Which isnrsquot the case with electronic voting machinesmdashwhere I guess you can instantly tell which polling booth among Amethirsquos 1963 voted for whom I wonder what that does to the principle of secret ballotsEach polling booth in Amethi as Vijay details had 20 workers assigned by the RSS BJPrsquos parent parallel network of volunteers swayamsevaks which had stationed itself November 2018 onwardsAs I suppose with other such constituencies the RSS maps Amethi into districts two khands seven mandals 93 and nyay panchayats 116 The swayamsevaks belong to shakhas local branches which increased from 250 in 2014 to 300 in 2019 There is no official procedure to become a swayamsevakThere are also recreationalteambuilding exercisesgames played inside shakhas like lsquoMein Shivajirsquo lsquoMitra raksharsquo One such game that had an effect Vijay cites is called lsquoDilli hamarirsquoIt involves a swayamsevak standing inside a circle repeatedly shouting lsquoWho will win Delhirdquo In a merrygoround of sorts or thatrsquos what I understood of it other participants try to enter the circle shouting back ldquoDilli hamarirdquoAnother move that apparently caught the attention of local married women was Irani organising a mass fast Durdariya vrat in honour of a local goddess Aosaan MaaiYet another one Vijay writes ldquoIrani learnt that during the revolt of 1857 Bhale Sultan of Umra village had posed a challenge to the British She became the first candidate from Amethi in the history of independent India to visit Umra and commemorate Bhale Sultanrdquo Segueing into movies still I see from her list that she also organised a free screening of the war movie UriThis is called a lsquocampaignrsquomdasha word that outside of elections is used for war and advertising A memory from the UP state election campaign in Prashant Jharsquos book How the BJP Wins Juggernaut is Prime Minister Narendra Modi referring to himself as the lsquosenapatirsquo As the old adage goes ldquoHalf of what we spend on advertising is a waste Except nobody knows which halfrdquoBeyond the boxoffice like blitzkrieg for a political party in a fresh and fair election surely among voters there are complicated issues both personal and public ethnic plus economic Here wersquore talking about only one candidatersquos arithmetic Iranirsquos 497 per cent votes against Rahulrsquos 438 and chemistry in a constituency of about 15 million voters in an electionExtrapolate that to multiple partiespeople among hundreds such constituencies to figure its complexity Yoursquore not surprised Delhibased top journalist types hardly ever get anything new right about an election beforehand They probably follow politics Not so versed in micromanagement plus mass mobilisation perhapsMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper