(Part 6)
Playbook of Elections in India
Gujarat was special. Maharashtra was accident. Haryana was coincidence. Bihar confirms the pattern. The old playbook is dead. West Bengal next year will be the the drowning moment of old playbook of Indian politics.
The Old Playbook
Consolidate 20% Muslim votes. Add 13% through caste rhetoric and identity politics. Deploy local goons for fear. Divide the rest. Come to power with 35% while others split 65% of votes. This worked for decades. It stopped working in 2014.
When the other side aims for 51% votes and already gets 45%, your 35% coalition is finished. You can’t win by dividing when they’re winning by uniting. You can’t win with fear when they’re winning with trust. You can’t win with middlemen when they’re connecting directly.
The New Playbook
Forget minority consolidation. Aim for majority directly. Deliver to everyone. Connect with everyone. Serve everyone. When you’re at 45% already and climbing, you don’t need polarization. You need performance. That’s the new mathematics. Old playbook assumed 35% was enough. New reality requires 50%+. Only delivery gets you there.
Direct connection with beneficiaries. ₹10,000 seed money to start a new business is in accounts. MLAs trained to visit homes. Ask about problems. Fix grievances in real time. Schemes reach people without leakage. No middlemen stealing. No brokers extracting. Direct benefit transfer works in real time. The voter gets what was promised. Trust builds. Votes follow.
Congress’s Fatal Admission
They claimed credit for introducing schemes. True. But they admitted they never ensured delivery. Also true. They were mute spectators while middlemen hijacked everything. That admission destroyed them. You created schemes but let them get stolen? Why should voters trust you again?
“We introduced the schemes but watched them get hijacked.”
This is political suicide. You’re admitting you had power but no delivery system. You had authority but no accountability. You had programs but no results. Why would voters return that? They already know schemes can work. They’re experiencing it now. Result? 6 seats out of 61 for Congress in Bihar.
The World’s Problem
International media and institutions don’t know how to process this. Their old categories don’t work. Their old analysis fails. Western political categories don’t capture this. Left-right spectrum fails. Liberal-conservative doesn’t fit. International institutions built assumptions on old Indian politics. Chaotic. Corrupt. Divided. Manageable. The new model is efficient. Direct. United. Unmanageable by external pressure. This terrifies the old order. So they call it dangerous. Because for them, it is.
This is about delivery infrastructure replacing extraction infrastructure. That’s not in any political science textbook. So they call it authoritarianism because they have no other vocabulary. They throw labels. Autocracy. Hindu nationalism. Vote theft. Caste oppression. Muslim persecution. Nothing sticks because none of it explains what voters actually experience.
Voters’ Experience
Money in account before election. Not after elections but before elections. MLA at their door asking about problems. Not during campaign only. Regularly. Atleast most of them. Schemes working without bribes to middlemen. Direct. Clean. Verifiable. This isn’t nationalism. This is delivery. Bihar has delivered its verdict. West Bengal is the next neighbour and is likely to go into elections next year. Will the voters, there not expect the same delivery? Something that is happening next door?
The Revolutionary Scale
State after state. Different demographics. Different histories. Same result. This isn’t one election. This is transformation. The old Indian political system is dying. A new one is being born. Built on delivery, not division. Built on trust, not fear. Built on direct connection, not broker networks.
Call it Hindu nationalism. But Muslims are getting the same ₹10,000. Same schemes. Call it autocracy. But people are voting freely for delivery over promises. Call it vote theft. But the pattern holds across machines, states, and systems. The labels are desperate attempts to fit new reality into old frameworks. The frameworks are obsolete.
The Middleman Vanished
For decades, Indian politics ran on brokers. Between government and people stood layers of extractors. Ration cards needed bribes. Scheme benefits needed cuts. Everything leaked like a sieve. Direct benefit transfer killed this. Money flows direct. No leakage. No brokers. The entire political class built on brokerage is dying. That’s the real revolution.
The core innovation is DBT or direct benefit transfer. Direct link between government and citizen. No party worker taking credit. This creates loyalty that rallies and slogans never could.
Trained MLA System
This is the secret weapon nobody discusses. MLAs aren’t just campaigners anymore. They’re grievance officers. Trained to visit homes. Ask about scheme problems. Report back. Get fixes done. This creates feedback loops. Problems get solved. Trust deepens. Loyalty strengthens. Congress MLAs don’t do this. They’re busy buying and selling tickets to highest bidders.
The Fear Factor Failure
Goons and mafia worked when people had no alternative. When they needed middlemen. When the alternative is ₹10,000 in account and MLA at your door solving problems, fear loses power. You can’t threaten people into voting against their material interests anymore. The delivery beats the intimidation.
West Bengal Awaits
If Bihar was the confirmation, West Bengal will be the coronation. The old playbook’s last stand. Identity politics. Fear tactics. Minority consolidation. It enforces TOLA tax as against direct schemes, delivered benefits, and trained MLAs asking about grievances. The outcome is predictable. The revolution continues.
Old playbook gets thrown in Bay of Bengal after elections in West Bengal will be poetic. The state where Communists ruled for decades through organization. Where TMC rules through fear and patronage. If TMC loses next election it is end of an old rule book.
Each election isn’t isolated. Each is a chapter in the same revolution.
Tailspin in Politics
Political parties in India don’t know how to compete with delivery. They are unable to deliver even in those states, where they are in power. Their entire skill set is rhetoric, not results. International observers don’t know how to categorize it. Their frameworks are inadequate. Media doesn’t know how to report it. The story is in account statements and MLA visits, not rallies and speeches. Everyone struggles because the rules changed and nobody wrote the new manual yet.
The Final Truth
The mathematics changed. The playbook died. The revolution continues. State after state. Election after election. The old drowns. The new rises. And the world watches, confused and concerned, as Indian democracy writes rules nobody taught in political science.
The Bay of Bengal awaits the old playbook. West Bengal will deliver it there personally. Next year.