Thus high prices and job cuts might all be very much on voters’ agendas, but their conclusions to those problems need not be simple: they needn’t be interpreted as straight-off

anti-incumbency.

Still, with the Congress and the BJP leading different state governments, analysts, and the parties themselves, are perplexed trying to second-guess whether anti-incumbency will land at the state government’s door or at the Centre’s. 

So it is naturally a tough one to predict. But that should not mislead analysts into dismissing the voter as not having “issues” — it is us, who perhaps lack the vocabulary to explain the changes afoot. Maybe we will have a different story to tell next Saturday.

seema.chishti@expressindia.com