Emerging unipolarity in politics with Northeast template

Sikkim & Arunachal attest to emerging unipolar politics in India

By Manish Anand

New Delhi, June 3: The Exit Polls have predicted a landslide for the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) in the Lok Sabha elections. The GIFT Nifty is eating out of the hands of the pollsters, with gains of almost 3.5 per cent for the index.

Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM) and the BJP retained power in Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh respectively. In Sikkim, the Prem Singh Tamag-led SKM won 31 of the toral 31 Assembly seats.

In 2019, the SKM had won 19 Assembly seats. The BJP won 46 of the total 60 Assembly seats in Arunachal Pradesh.

The main Opposition party in Sikkim won just one Assembly seat. The main Opposition party in Arunachal Pradesh, the Congress, won just one Assembly seat.

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The two Northeastern states affirmed the decimation of the Opposition. They also endorsed the unipolarity of politics.

The Exit Polls preceded the verdict of the Assembly polls in the two Northeastern states. The pollsters echoed the Sikkim and Arunachal verdict.

The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) will better the 2019 verdict, the pollsters said in unison. The pollsters affirmed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has no challenger in sight.

There is a disbelief in a section of the intelligentsia over the scale of the projected victory of the BJP.

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“If they turn out to be true, there will be no need in future to go to the people and ask for their views on elections and issues. The media can just take interviews of the members of the ruling party,” said a senior political journalist.

Some are arguing that the Exit Polls only affirmed the ‘confirmation bias’. They argue that the audience wants to listen to just what they want.

This was also affirmed by a short video clip of one television anchors. They asserted on air that the channels like theirs should not be giving space to the representatives of the Opposition parties.

The unipolarity in the space for commentaries, at least in television, is visible. The newspapers are blindly following in the footsteps of television.

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The Opposition is trying hard to reject the notion of the unipolarity in politics. “Exit Polls are the tools of the BJP against the Opposition parties. They are trying to demoralise the Opposition leaders,” said the communication department chief of the Congress, Jairam Ramesh.

But political observers underline that the unipolarity in politics has several legs. The perception management with pollsters is just one of those legs.

Importantly, the unipolarity in politics hinges on physically ensuring that the polling agents of the Opposition parties at the individual voting stations go missing. This has been achieved in several of the states, argue political observers.

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About The Author

Manish Anand

Manish Anand is a senior journalist with more than two decades of hardcore reporting on beats such as Prime Minister’s Office, Parliament, BJP, Congress, Planning Commission, NITI Aayog, and scores of Union Ministries.

His past has been with The New Indian Express, The Asian Age/Deccan Chronicle, and The Statesman.

For about 15 years, Manish was also a regular commentator and host for talks on AIR on foreign affairs.

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