In Saffron Stacks, Stocks & Stakes

The run-up to 2019 was peppered with much discontent, many agitations. Come D-Day, the voter’s message is all’s well with the BJP and its governance

- Prachi Pinglay-Plumber

THE Marathi Manoos has spoken and right now his overwhelming support is for the saffron party. If the mood of voters were to reflect in numbers, the Sensex would be as appropriate an index as the election results. Crossing 40,000 for the first time, the Sensex has been at an all-time high since the exit polls declared the BJP to be a clear winner. It closed lower than the magic number because of profit-booking, but there is no mistaking the market’s mood—as also that of Maharashtra’s voters.

“We had observed a silent wave in PM Modi’s support, which would transform into a tsunami. Especially the middle class and the poor were eager to elect Narendra Modiji. And…Modiji has got a never­before mandate,” CM Devendra Fadnavis told the press, adding that people in drought­hit Maharashtra believed his government’s promise of sup­ porting them with the help of the Modi government.

The Congress and the NCP got a drubbing across the state, while the CPI(M) lost in Dindori, from where the Kisan Long March had started this February. “We can see three fac­ tors at work—jingoistic nationalism, communal polarisation and corpo­ rate power,” says All India Kisan Sabha general secretary Ashok Dhawle. “This government has not fulfilled any promise it made in 2014. Several issues such as the agrarian crisis were reflected in the assembly polls that year, but not this time.”