The headlines on mainstream media sites today have been soaked through with befuddlement. “UPset for BJP, surprise gains for Congress,” one punned.
To regular readers of Scroll, though, the results of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections haven’t been entirely unexpected. Over the past months, our colleagues have worn out the shoe leather making trips across the country, listening carefully to the aspirations of India’s voters. Our reports gave a fair sense of the sentiment of voters.
Our series “No acche din but…” told the stories of Indians whose lives have not perceptibly improved over the past decade but are still enchanted by the promises held out by Narendra Modi. For instance, Mumbai security guard Ajit Kumar Yadav spoke of how he struggled to support his family on his double-shift wage of Rs 16,000. But his vote was still going to be Bharatiya Janata Party. “They built the Ram temple,” he said. “That is a greater achievement than providing employment.”
In other quarters, though, the frustration was obvious. In a perceptive report from Uttar Pradesh, Supriya Sharma noted that Dalit voters were suspicious about the BJP and its appeal that voters to give it more than 400 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha. They believed the Hindutva party wanted this brute majority in order to be able to change the Constitution and were rallying to its defence.
We also reported rigorously on the instances in which the electoral system was violated – how candidates in Amit Shah’s constituency of Gandhinagar were pressured to withdraw their papers, how nominations in Narendra Modi’s constituency of Varanasi were rejected on technical grounds, how Muslims voters were prevented from casting their votes and their names deleted from the rolls.
We’re grateful to you for your help covering the 2024 Lok Sabha campaign, the most significant one in India’s history. As you know, journalism of this sort isn’t cheap.
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