Elections to five state assemblies have prompted a nationwide discourse. The debate has ranged from visions of Armageddon for the present ruling party to divined status for the principal challenger. Yet the results are a mixed bag, at least in the crucial states of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. The results have thrown up ten important takeaways, in random order.

The politics of religion, from Ram Mandir to gotra and the Brahmanical strings of piety, does not fill empty bellies. If majoritarian politics has flopped, so has the challenger’s halfhearted religious pitch. That has partly accounted for the dingdong electoral battle in MP and Rajasthan. In Telangana, good governance by TRS paid off without any religious overtones while voters rejected development in Chhattisgarh. Clearly, happiness springs from the belly rather than roads, bridges, irrigation, and so on.

Negative campaigns did not help either. While the incumbents failed to impress voters with their record in past governance, the challengers did not have the foggiest idea of what governance to deliver. Hence the fractured verdict in MP and Rajasthan. For Chhattisgarh and MP evidently, development was outbalanced by allegations of corruption against the incumbent CMs and their families.

Telangana rejected TDP in favour of their homegrown son who is relatively untainted by corruption charges. Voters were willing to forgive his generosity upon himself and devoting state coffers to Lord Venkateshwara and his divine friends. This equally holds a strong warning to the Congress and BJP ~ the people are not interested in their lofty proclamations and white lies; perform or perish, even risk a physical assault.

The incumbent troika with their majoritarian pitch only sabotaged whatever chances their chief ministers had. It even seemed that the troika’s pitch was geared to keep the chief minister of MP from winning by a devious religious slant that was diametrically opposed to what that CM has been saying all these years about religion being a matter of personal choice alone. Had this CM won his fourth term, he may have emerged as a consensus candidate for next PM in the event the numbers did not add up and a BJP-led coalition became inevitable.

Interviews of the voters in the media indicated ten major categories of grievances: viz.

1) Job reservations

2) Loan waivers benefitting large farmers and the loans they took from cooperative banks

3) Gross inadequacy of waivers for smaller farmers of ludicrous figures of Rs. 2.50 in certain cases

4) Delayed payment of crop insurance damage

5) Endemic unemployment

6) Rising energy and food costs and food imports that severely undermined ambitious MSPs that were never adhered to in terms of quantity and the resultant depressed prices for agri-produce.

7)Low wages and erratic government cash hand-outs form a cash-strapped public exchequer

8) Huge harm caused to business, mostly MSME (the largest employers) by demonetisation and cow terrorism that have all but ruined our lucrative leather industry, indeed many more.

9) Delayed refund of GST, particularly to exporters who employed thousands of workers.

10) Unbridgeable gaps between promise and performance of incumbents.

Interestingly, the DBT of Rs 4000 per acre in Telangana was welcomed, while MP’s cash-handout- based regime with erratic payouts evidently was not attractive enough. These issues also were almost entirely within the jurisdiction of the Government of India.

Much as incumbents may proclaim, these issues are not going away before April 2019 and may even haunt the present ruling party. Neither is there enough public funds available to indulge voters. Nor is there much time to woo the voters before April 2019 when the Model Code of Conduct sets in.

These are national issues and affect all states and all farm activity, unemployed youth, low wages, women. Why else would Gujjars and Jats swing away from the BJP in Rajasthan?

Another interesting issue was the near-total absence of truckloads of cash, sewing machines, sarees, bicycles, laptops, etc. as ‘incentive’ to voters. Evidently, voters did not evince much interest in such ‘incentives’. A related issue was the minimal violence by political party goons since voters were tightlipped in all surveys and there was no way of gauging their political preferences and prejudices to beat them into submission beforehand.

Gone are the days of multi-thousand vote victories. Up to a fifth of seats in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan had contests with a difference of 125-1500 votes among the two principal contestants. This probably has delayed the declaration of results by the Election Commission.

The voter has clearly put political parties on notice. Holograms of Napoleon do not impress voters any more. Elections are no longer about personalities; instead they are wholly about public welfare. With frighteningly narrow margins of victory, an MLA/MP would have to perform or face physical assault (many faced it during the campaign). They run the risk of being defeated in the next election. The incumbent Mizoram chief minister was defeated in both constituencies. The irrelevant Indian is making himself/herself relevant at long last.

Caste loyalties do not seem to have had an appreciable effect on voting patterns. The Gujjars switching over to Sachin Pilot was more an economic compulsion rather than caste-based. Another emerging trend has been the positive voter response to more educated leaders, be they the Gwalior scion, Pilot or TS Singh Deo (Chhattisgarh).

Akhilesh Yadav reaped the benefit when he was elected Chief Minister of UP. A sub-theme was the ongoing pull-push between the old guard and the new. Jaded and tainted warhorses from the past will negate the challenger’s goodwill and erode its hard-earned voter base by April 2019.

The same holds true of the incumbent with its preponderant and toxic holy leader and religious zealot combine. States need out-of-the-box thinking that the old guard is simply not capable of ~ education, training and awareness. In fact, all parties need to mandatorily adopt the retirment age of 60 years for all their members, starting from the level of general secretary and above. Rising longevity seldom reflects in the quality and efficiency of performance.

Social media, more than TV, notably in the vernacular, is a double-edged sword, like all other media, but far more potent and uncontrolled. If incumbents relied on abusive bots and rabid haters with none other than the PM’s likes egging them on, challengers were often far more articulate, something that the BJP was simply unable to negate.

Abuse and trolls, particularly in the vernacular, on platforms like Twitter, reached the remotest corners of India, casting leaders as power-and cash-hungry Frankensteins. Hence, voting decisions were made in the confines of homes, a tribute to the common voter. These rendered political rallies and pre-poll surveys redundant, hence the low turnouts and wrong survey predictions. Combined with an excessively majoritarian slant, trolls and abuse was the other side of the social media sword that the incumbents never realized in their exuberance of 2014.

Swati Chaturvedi’s book, I am a Troll is frightening and includes trolls from many incumbent parties. If used effectively to deliver services to voters, social media is the new electoral weapon of the 21st century. It is the world’s newest Weapon of Mass Destruction/ Construction, a double-edged sword, as Elections 2018 have showed. Party-based cadres too had seemingly little effect, perhaps more of a throwback to the politics of the 1950s-1990s, often an embarrassment and liability, apart from adding to overhead costs and reputational loss.

Finally, in an economically disadvantaged nation like India self-respect remains high on the pecking order. ‘Buying’ votes via erratic cash hand-outs as MP tried from a tottering public exchequer, is hardly a replacement for jobs that are honourable recompense for a hard-working family.

Telangana’s Rs 4000/acre handout assisted the honest farmer, and did not bestow gratis upon him; that is why it was a clear winner. The sheer arrogance of public moneys being thrown in the faces of voters, akin to alms to a beggar, is something not even the poorest will tolerate, seven decades after Independence.

In the next five years, we should be prepared to see our MPs/MLAs facing physical assault and virulent abuse from their electors and their goons publicly thrashed, a sure sign of coming of age for Indian democracy.

A silent voter revolution is finally happening in India. The voter has finally come of age. To ignore their loud warnings is folly for any political party, incumbent and challenger.

The writer is a senior public policy analyst and commentator. Comments are personal.