No longer can the challenger therefore presume he will win just because of anti-incumbency. This is what the Congress realised in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, and the BJP in Delhi. This change is rooted in anti-incumbency because, most of all, it was that phenomenon that convinced the politician that if he had to have any chance of getting re-elected he had to perform extraordinarily well. In the past, if he could presume another term on the basis of caste, identity, old grievances and insecurities, he felt no such pressure.

The best example of that politics is Lalu’s 18 lost years in Bihar. Today the fear of certain defeat has made even the most cynical caste-identity-communal leaders perform. That is why our politics is going through such a radical and positive transformation.

This is what the psephologists and pundits have missed. Their models, thinking, mantras are still based on old AJGAR, MAJGAR, KHAM, Hindu/Muslim, empowerment/identity formulae. They have completely overlooked the new sense of confidence the voter now feels, having tasted the power to change governments over nearly two decades. This confidence leads to wiser voting by a better educated and more confident voter who, for the first time in our democratic history, is now willing to seek a stake in the future rather than be settling scores for the past. The politics of grievance, some of us had dared to suggest almost five years back, is now making way for the politics of aspiration. The entire series of election results, topped by Kashmir, now confirm that. Political leaders, as also the pundits and psephologists who fail to acknowledge that change, will soon be history, like our old politics of negativism.

... contd.