| Political opinion polls are a hazardous business.
Specially at a time when the political scenario is fluid. During assembly elections, these
predictions become even more chancy, for local issues and shaky alignments come into play.
Still, our poll two weeks ago was closer than any other. Like the others we spotted the
trends in Rajasthan and Delhi which pointed to a Congress return. More importantly, we
were the only ones to prophesy the Congress' good fortune in Madhya Pradesh. Even the exit
polls missed this. Oddly enough our accurate
predictions earned us both praise and invective. As we discovered, any poll that bucks
conventional wisdom, like our forecast for Madhya Pradesh, is not digested easily. Indeed,
certain prominent members of the ruling party questioned our motives. As it turned out the
results vindicated us and proved how removed they were from reality.
With the defeat of the BJP, the focus has shifted to the
enigmatic Sonia Gandhi. There is curiosity about what Sonia represents and how a person
with such nominal public exposure is able to rejuvenate a party that many were willing to
write off only a year ago. As Senior Editor Sumit Mitra, assisted by Associate Editors
Harinder Baweja and Harish Gupta, set off to research our cover story, they once again ran
into a wall of silence. A few months ago I wrote in this column that Sonia was a
journalist's nightmare. She still is, aloof and unavailable for interviews. It meant that
our reporters had to talk to those who are proverbially "close to 10 Janpath" to
get a sense of a person who is the Congress' only candidate for prime minister. Says
Mitra: "Never before have I written a cover story on someone I've never met."
When it's Sonia, there is no other choice.
(Aroon Purie) |
