In a muddled situation where the bravest psephologist won’t predict anything more than a whole range of uncertainties for this election, let me stick my neck out and underline some certainties. But no, even I will not be so foolhardy as to predict who the next prime minister will be.

The first certainty is that this election will confirm a trend that began five years ago in our politics — that performance pays. In these past five years anti-incumbency has gone down from almost 70 per cent to 46 per cent. And nothing about this voter behaviour is irrational. No government that performed has been voted out due to sheer voter contempt or arrogance. On the contrary, those that performed have been re-elected. Similarly, no non-performing government has been re-elected just because of its communal, caste or ideological appeal. This election will re-affirm this as a welcome, new trend for the coming years.

What this means is that leaders who have delivered governance will get the numbers. Nitish Kumar in Bihar, Narendra Modi in Gujarat, Hooda in Haryana, Sheila Dikshit in Delhi, Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Raman Singh in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, respectively, will be nearly unassailable, whatever the coalitions or forces arrayed against them. Even Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy, who faces an unprecedented TDP-TRS-Left alliance in a three-way contest with Chiranjeevi as spoiler, will avert the disaster that you would normally have predicted, just because his government is seen to have delivered in cities as well as villages — and also in the war against Naxalites.

... contd.