The media is now writing hundreds of pages on who will become the next Prime Minister of India? Will it be Narendra Modi or someone from the Third Front? The topic of the discussion clearly shows that there is no chance of anybody from the Congress.
When an election is fought in India, the party that gives the maximum amount of hope to the people for the next five years, wins. Out of Narendra Modi and the Third front, the former is a bit ahead because of the hope he has generated among the masses in the Hindi heartland. Whether he will be able to govern well, is a question? He has lead Gujarat, which was already a leading state of India when he took over as CM. Gujaratis are well known for their business acumen, and wherever they go, they come out as a successful business class creating thousands of jobs, be it West Bengal or Bihar or Maharashtra or Gujarat. It is not because of his caliber that Gujarat has prospered. But somehow, people are considering him as a good option thinking he is a man with a vision.
But his charisma may be stopped in those states which are mostly governed by individual leaders with their personal charisma. States like Bihar, West Bengal, Tamilnadu, Andhra Pradesh go by the individual charisma of Nitish Kumar, Mamata Banerjee, Jayalalitha and Jagan Reddy respectively. These are more or less like princely states ruled by their respective princes. The list also has Mulayam in UP and Navin Pattanayak in Orissa. Narendra Modi is a least important factor in these states.
The media is clearly behind Mr. Modi. But media was also behind Mr Bajpayee in 2004 general elections. But the negative aspect of media is that they are mostly urban based and always reflects the opinion of the people going around them. In 2004 also, they failed to read the mood of the rural India which voted hugely in favor of the Congress.
The rulers of these states are planning to form a Third Front and may get a sizeable numbers of seats in the Parliament, if flocked together. History says that their experiment of getting flocked together has failed three times in the past. Whether it will succeed this time, is more of a question of doubt than uncertainty.
So, the winner of this Parliamentary election will definitely be the uncertainty factor as it looms over all political parties. Another question is if Mr. Modi fails this time, will his opponents in BJP give him a second chance in the next elections? Or is it now or never for Mr. Modi?
