The 2024 Lok Sabha elections have opened a brand new chapter that serves up several new lessons. The first and foremost lesson is the one that’s been taught to BJP supremo Narendra Modi — who apparently started believing in his divine infallibility, and that he could do no wrong, and that his word should be considered as final. The poll outcome has brought him down to earth and taught him that the country and democracy are much stronger than any individual.

Having ruled in his own one-man style, the 2024 poll has given him a stark wake-up call. Now, as Prime Minister of a coalition government, he will have to respect coalition ‘dharma’ and take his allies along in the decision-making process. He will have to curb the autocratic tendencies that were on display during the last 10 years.

While careful and slow deliberations may be good on the political front, reducing the speed of economic reforms may not be such a good thing. The economic reforms process will be very tough now and Mr Modi will have to deliberate much more before taking any radical steps on economic growth. All this will be totally different to the speed with which political and economic decisions were taken so far.

On another front, the so-called exit polls turned out to be the villain of the piece in these elections. ‘Interested’ parties presented exit polls that were miles away from the final reality. These exit polls painted a rosy picture of an absolute majority for the ruling party, which created a bullish environment in the stock market and pushed up stock prices to sky-high levels.

In fact, a TMC leader, Saket Gokhale, has complained to the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) , the regulator of the capital market, alleging that pollsters had manipulated the exit polls to influence the stock market and benefiting investors who made massive profits on June 3 after the market had shot up on the back of the exit polls. However, on June 4, when the actual results were announced, investors were stunned at the relatively poor showing of the ruling party vis-à-vis the rosy picture painted by the exit polls. Mr Gokhale has asked SEBI to investigate the scandal and take appropriate action against the culprits who misled the investing public by predicting a landslide victory for the BJP-led NDA.

The bigger question arises: If pollsters are going to show what is demanded by the ruling party, is there any real need for exit polls? If these polls are manipulated and misused, should they not be banned? Besides, there are complaints that pollsters don’t do their groundwork well and their conclusions are figments of the imagination. For example, Rajasthan has 25 Lok Sabha seats but one exit poll gave the BJP 33 seats! Likewise, in Uttarakhand, the total number of seats is 5 but a pollster declared BJP winning six seats!

As a political activist commented, in India exit polls have lost their relevance as they are manipulated and based on prejudice. These exit polls should be banned as they have proved totally wrong and misleading many a time. These polls are a wrong attempt to influence the people of the country, the administrative system and the election commission before the actual day of counting votes.