Worth reading for a POV that I pretty much disagree with. This is not why the BJP is winning & the Congress is losing.
The perception of a good or bad economy is felt by the middle class through prices. Here is India’s rate of inflation over a ten year period. 
Now people of privilege feel the economic pinch under BJP, credit is tight, free money from banks has gone down, advertising has gone down, media income has gone down.
But the middle class was never privy to the “let the champagne flow” good times of UPA. I am an economist so maybe the BJP is mismanaging the economy. The point is it’s not manifesting itself as perceived hardship for those who vote.
I meant “I am not an economist”
The BJP has not had scams on the scale of Congress. Rafale just didn’t stick in the way 2G and Augusta etc did. People usually take that to mean “the government is trying its best”
Identity politics work. This is not a question of morality, the Congress has done identity politics too when it has suited them, right now they have screwed every community they have claimed to champion so badly that they they can’t play it any more. Not that they don’t want to.
The Congress can try to mend bridges but for that it needs to jettison the Gandhi clan. It is very evident that many leaders in the Congress feel so. Ram Guha, Congress superfan, says so. However this is not something the Congress as a whole is willing to do
People vote by emotion. The BJP messages a muscular India first while the Congress stands for groaning and moaning and trying to push a Gandhi onto the throne. How can a country feel emotional about the Congress?
What is the Congress offering the country? Rahul Gandhi? Priyanka Gandhi? Sonia Gandhi? These are the choices the party gives to the country. Of course Gandhi family surrogates in media won’t focus on that, it’s usually “look how easily manipulated the electorate is”
On the other hand what the liberal media sees as fascism, people love, the avancular-muscular appeal of Modi and Shah. Critics can say “it’s all myth making” but even then it’s a stronger myth than the one the Congress is selling.
In Bengal, after the electoral setbacks, Mamata is doing 2 things right. First she is pretending to listen, she is acknowledging she may have made mistakes. Posturing this may be, but people like that humility. The other is Bengali parochialism being used to counter pan-Hinduism
In contrast, the Congress goes to England to undermine India’s position on Kashmir, push Imran Khan’s narrative to spite Modi. And then NDTV wonders on their show why we are becoming single party democracy?
You have the then-Congress 2 at a book event conjecturing if 26/11 was a RSS false flag operation. In which country can any political party come back from this?
I will take a personal example. When I was in early 20s, I wanted to go into politics. The only party I felt I could have home In was the Congress. But the Congress of PV Narasimha Rao. Then over the years under Sonia Gandhi it morphed into the political equivalent of Mimoh.
