On the day the results came from Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, BJP spokespersons did their best to portray the news from Gujarat as a victory. ‘Jo jeeta wohi Sikander’, they said many, many times. But we who sat in TV studios analysing the twists and turns of the results knew that the Prime Minister would have been seriously worried that there were moments that day when it seemed as if the Congress was going to win his home state.
Us political pundits concluded, in the end, that if it had not been for the exceptional services rendered to him by Mani Shankar Aiyar and Kapil Sibal, the Prime Minister may not have been able to turn looming defeat into a fragile victory in the last days of the campaign. When he has a chance, he should listen to what the youth of Gujarat told TV reporters over and over again: jobs, jobs, jobs. This is what they want more than anything. Exactly this is true for the rest of India.
