A word of caution here. The voter's no economist, and (still) doesn't argue that he won't vote for the BJP because the fiscal deficit's too high or because not enough's been done to tackle the problem of rising bad loans (non-performing assets, in jargon) of banks. He reacts to more easily understood indicators like price rise and overall prosperity. But since you can't havelow price rises and high economic growth when the fiscal deficit or NPAs are ballooning out of control, he's actually voting for or against the very issues economists are obsessed with.

Not convinced? Most opinion polls as well as the limited exit poll exercises (for 27 seats that have gone to poll out of a total of 42 in the state) in Andhra Pradesh show that the Chandrababu Naidu-BJP alliance is ahead -- the Jain TV exit poll says they'll win 17 seats. Now how do you explain this performance for a chief minister who's actually cutting subsidies in all areas from free rice to electricity and water, who seems more obsessed with getting top information technology giants to his state and who wishes to be known as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Andhra Pradesh? Though hurt by the fact that the highly subsidised rice supplies are being cut, obviously the voter's seen through the fact that N.T. Rama Rao's populist policies actually resulted in the state going bankrupt and a sharp decline in industrialgrowth and fresh job creation.

And while most thought the Akali-BJP government had scored massively with voters by promising farmers free electricity and water when they came to power, the exit poll results indicate the exact opposite. The DRS exit poll showed by Doordarshan says the Congress is going to win 10 out of 13 seats. In the last election, the Congress was completely wiped out in Punjab.

Two things are happening here. For one, as in Andhra, the voter's realised, at some level, that while the subsidies are more than welcome, government policies are somehow resulting in lower growth, lower investments and lower prosperity in the state -- that's bad, not to be tolerated, and so the government has to be voted out. Second, again the same holds for both states, though the governments have made huge promises of subsidies, they haven't been able to deliver. The reason is also the same: with the basic economic fundamentals not in order, and poor skills in basic administration (the two usually gotogether), the government's not in any position to deliver -- how can a bankrupt state generate enough power, or create fresh irrigation facilities, to be able to provide this free to farmers?

Besides, while it's true that all farmers like subsidies (who doesn't?), limited surveys in Uttar Pradesh by the Fertiliser Association of India have shown sharp decline in soil productivity over the past few years -- excessive subsidies have distorted the mix used of different fertilisers and this has reduced productivity. Similarly, farmers don't like to pay for water and electricity, but they would prefer to pay if this ensured they got adequate and timely supplies. Unfortunately, most political parties haven't understood this and continue to feel the voter'll go by just promises and rhetoric. Bhalla's model, which has actually predicted the vote swings correctly in 20 out of 24 central and state elections since 1977, shows exactly how the voters react to increases in economic growth and a fall in inflation levels.The model predicted, last year, for example, that the BJP would do disastrously in the assembly elections -- it showed that the dramatic rise in inflation levels would alone lead to over a 9 percent fall in BJP votes. Overall, it predicted a 13.5 percent vote swing in favour of the Congress in the `onion' elections, against the actual swing of 14.9 percent. Talk to any BJP or Congress leader, and they also attribute the BJP's pathetic showing to the onion crisis.

Similarly, this time around, while factors like Kargil and Sonia Gandhi's foreign origin are clearly major election issues, one of the factors in the BJP's favour is the fact that the economy's finally begun perking up after several years of being in the doldrums. Despite all manner of Congressmen, including Dr. Manmohan Singh himself, saying the country's heading towards economic disaster, Bhalla's model shows there'll be a 13.5 percent swing away from the Congress due to this reason in the current elections -- that's 13.5 percent less than whatit got in the assemblies last time, but 1.4 percent more than it got in the last national elections.

The BJP-alliance, the model predicts, will get around 42 percent votes while the Congress (alone) will get around 27 percent. The exit polls show the BJP-alliance will get 45 percent votes and the Congress (plus its partners) will get 39 percent! Not bad. It's still the economy, stupid, as Bill Clinton said while defeating George Bush the first time around.