Silent voters will decide country's fate

For more than 12 months, opinion polls had predicted a Labour victory and even senior liberal strategists were not confident enough to predict a coalition victory in Australia in the just concluded elections that saw the defeat of the Labour Party.

Bookmakers had already paid out millions of dollars of money, confident that a Labour government would be elected comfortably.

Conventional wisdom also said so, no doubt. But Saturday's result (real result not exit poll result) left them wondering now.

Pollsters now, in Australia, say that the polls were well within the three per cent margin of error. But the problem was in terms of predicting it when it came right down to the wire.

There were a lot of undecided voters till the very last moment and they decided in favour of the coalition at the polling booths. That made all the difference.

But it would be interesting to see how comparable the Australian and Indian elections are, given that we too have seen the exit polls. Though Rahul Gandhi has worked hard in recent months to project his charisma and offer hope, it is indubitable that there is only one true salesman in India.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party oversells himself. The BJP is expected to bleed seats in UP, the State which sends the maximum numbers to the Parliament.

The BJP would be able to make up for the losses here only if it makes it up in West Bengal and Odisha. Modi who focused on his anti-Pakistan stance and projected himself as a devout Hindu, seems to be the political counterpart of Morrison in India.

Right now, the country has three types of people. Modi bhakts, Modi-haters and spectators. The last one is not a small number. Whom did they vote for?

There is certainly a fear factor that dogs them and they never let their preference known to anyone including to an exit poll researcher.

It is these silent ones who unleashed Brexit upon the UK and Trump upon the US. It is the silent ones who toppled the Labour party led by Bill Shorten and elected Scott Morrison. How about India?

Whatever may be the exit poll predictions and poll of polls say, the wait will be over for India.

The result will be out soon. This has been a toxic campaign throughout with the discourse taking it from one end to the other in which personalities were devoured and the dead and gone too were not spared.

This was a campaign, in which real people's issues were buried down under and rarely any reference was made to the nation building process. National heroes were shamed and Godses' became Gods.

Yet, now that it is all over, will everybody sit down quietly and take in the result as it comes.

Now that the contest is over, all of us have a responsibility to respect the result, respect the wishes of the Australian people and to bring our nation together.

Hope wisdom dawns on the victorious and the vanquished. A new effort must begin to work jointly for the progress of the nation.