In the wake of a sting operation exposing 11 opinion poll agencies as willing to tweak their findings and show higher results for certain parties, obviously for a consideration, some television channels and news magazines have cancelled their contracts with the named agencies. The head of a leading new channel, worried about how this may affect the credibility of election specials he intends to run, has let it be known that the CSDS and AC Nielsen were the only two agencies that did not succumb to the temptations offered by Newexpress.
The Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) of course means psephologist Yogendra Yadav who is the eminence grise of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and has an enviable reputation for generally getting his predictions right. It is said that as an experienced pollster, Yogendra Yadav realised that the Congress was sinking beyond retrieval; he and some of his close friends then founded the AAP to attract the committed but disillusioned voter of the Congress and the Communist parties. Prior to the AAP, however, he was close to UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and was appointed to the National Advisory Committee (NAC) in 2010 to oversee implementation of the Right to Education Act, which pushed the burden of educating children from economically weaker sections to the middle class families having school going children.
It, therefore, comes as a surprise to learn that Yogendra Yadav has had some very ‘oh my gosh’ moments when he did his wishful thinking – or tweaking – out aloud, in print, which is not easy to wash off. In an opinion poll he conducted in July 2013 for the “State of the Nation,” Yogendra Yadav announced that Narendra Modi comes nowhere close to Rahul Gandhi as the preferred choice for next Prime Minister. The poll found that “Just 5 per cent want Modi as PM, while 42 per cent want Rahul Gandhi”. Also, 34 per cent of those polled wanted Rahul Gandhi to immediately replace Manmohan Singh.
Such startling findings are not accidental with Yadav. In the Gujarat Assembly elections of 2007, voting for which was held on December 13 and 17, where a record 71.32 per cent votes were cast, Yogendra Yadav opined, “This election may well be the long deferred moment of truth for the man who invoked popular mandate to bypass norms, laws or the Constitution. We cannot yet say that he will lose this election. But a journey through Saurashtra is enough to suggest that the BJP is losing ground in this crucial region. Exit polls would measure the extent of this loss, but at this stage the indications are enough to think about what was unspeakable some time ago: Modi can lose the election” (Modi’s moment of truth, The Indian Express, December 11, 2007).
Yadav wrote this just two days before polling, on the basis of an opinion poll he conducted. The article suggests that he would also do an exit poll, and it would be interesting to see the statistics he put out at the time. But we do have his homilies on Indian Secularism’s bête noire, “Nor is it a routine case of anti-incumbency, nor more appropriately a punishment for misgovernance…” Yadav does not explain what he means by misgovernance, and even contradicts himself several times while trying to build up the villainy of Narendra Modi, “the claims of the Gujarat government on development are not altogether false. A Dalit Congress Sarpanch in a remote village would concede that electricity, education and health facilities have gotten better in the last five years”. Admitting that Narendra Modi is the most popular leader in the State, he insists nevertheless that, “This election is not about Modi”.
Clearly, Yogendra Yadav failed to read his tea leaves properly! He seems to have taken much of his briefing from disgruntled elements of the discarded Congress raj, or how else can one explain the following, “Democracy’s revenge is taking an unusual and perhaps unholy form in this election. Modi’s success depended upon shutting down the routine and normal business of politics, on not having to share power with anyone. He managed to close down the routine patronage system… by working through bureaucrats and appealing directly to the people… He refused to pay any attention not just to the opposition, but also to media and civil society. He has been mindful of caste and local equations, but planned the election in such a way that these messy factors should not become overriding”.
“The 2007 election was to be about Gujarati asmita, about a state that has discovered its identity and vibrancy, thanks to Modi. In short this election was to be a plebiscite on Modi. This is not how it has turned out. While Modi could tame the opposition and shut up his critics, he could not shut down democratic politics. This election is about the resurfacing of normal politics… This may well prove the nemesis of Narendra Modi”, says Yadav.
Yogendra Yadav is unable to explain how Narendra Modi can lose. He realises that the inner party rebellion has been over-rated by the media, and that even Keshubhai Patel does not add up to much. He seems to have placed his bets on a covert RSS sabotage; possibly he over-rated the importance of a certain dissident from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.
After travelling from constituency to constituency, the CSDS expert concludes, “caste-community equations have resurfaced with a vengeance, and this necessitated doing a fresh arithmetic of the kind we did only in Bihar or Haryana. …. It is not that the BJP has not done its caste arithmetic carefully or that its choice of candidates is indifferent. It is just that this is not BJP’s game”. By protecting himself with a disclaimer that the final outcome is still unknown, Yadav is unable to resist a venomous dig at the Chief Minister, “we do know that for all its flaws, normal politics is perhaps the best guarantee against the dark side of democracy that Gujarat has witnessed”.
In the light of the above it seems reasonable to deduce that the AAP and its national ambitions were planned many years before it actually burst on the Delhi spectrum. As for Gujarat 2007 election, the BJP won 117 seats and 49.1 per cent of the votes polled; Congress won 59 seats and 38 per cent of the votes; the remaining 6 seats went to others. In the previous election of 2002, the BJP won 127 seats and 49.9 per cent votes; Congress got 51 seats and 39.3 per cent of the votes; the remaining 4 seats went to others. Thus, while BJP’s seats and vote share declined marginally, Congress gained 8 seats in 2007 but actually lost vote share, yet the nation’s leading psephologist concluded that Narendra Modi was set to lose the poll!
The ‘bad news’ continues. The Pew Research Centre in a survey conducted across India between December 7, 2013 and January 12, 2014, reports that 63 per cent Indians favour BJP as against only 19 per cent for Congress, in the forthcoming general election (February 26, 2014). While support for a BJP-led government is strongest in the north, it is also roughly equal in rural and urban areas, suggesting a deep erosion of the Congress’s rural base which has not been overcome by the employment and food security programmes.
In terms of personal popularity, Narendra Modi is miles ahead of the others with 78 per cent holding a favorable view him as compared to 16 per cent who hold an unfavorable view. Yogendra Yadav would really need to explain his own findings from just six months ago. But what is really interesting, is that Pew Research Centre finds in its survey that Rahul Gandhi is seen favorably by 50 per cent and unfavorably by 43 per cent. According to the survey, the ardent support for the Gujarat Chief Minister is 60 per cent while only 23 per cent of the public have a very favorable opinion of the Congress heir apparent. Congress president Sonia Gandhi is seen favorably by 49 per cent but unfavourably by 46 per cent; Manmohan Singh ranks higher with 52 per cent support.
Meanwhile, the Chief Election Commissioner VS Sampath has tossed the decision on banning opinion polls to the Government saying that the Election Commission had suggested certain restrictions way back in 2004 and now it was for the Government to act on it. The Congress wants the Commission to invoke its powers under Article 324 of the Constitution to ensure free and fair polls by banning opinion polls till 48 hours from the time polling closes, for the forthcoming general election.
Niticentral.com, 27 February 2014
http://www.niticentral.com/2014/02/27/yogendra-yadav-the-sting-in-the-survey-194094.html