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By:

Yogesh Kumar Goyal

19 April 2026 at 12:32:19 pm

The Exit Poll Mirage

While exit polls sketch a dramatic map of India’s electoral mood, the line between projection and verdict remains perilously thin. With the ballots across five politically pivotal arenas of West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Kerala and Puducherry falling silent until the results are announced on May 4, poll surveyors have filled the vacuum with exit poll numbers that excite, alarm and often mislead. These projections have already begun shaping narratives well before D-Day on May 4. If India’s...

The Exit Poll Mirage

While exit polls sketch a dramatic map of India’s electoral mood, the line between projection and verdict remains perilously thin. With the ballots across five politically pivotal arenas of West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Kerala and Puducherry falling silent until the results are announced on May 4, poll surveyors have filled the vacuum with exit poll numbers that excite, alarm and often mislead. These projections have already begun shaping narratives well before D-Day on May 4. If India’s electoral history offers any lesson, it is that exit polls illuminate trends, not truths. Bengal’s Brinkmanship Nowhere is the drama more intense than in West Bengal, arguably the most keenly watched contest among all five arenas. The contest for its 294 seats has long transcended the state’s borders, becoming a proxy for national ambition. Most exit polls now point to a striking possibility of a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) majority, in some cases a commanding one. Such an outcome would mark a political earthquake. For decades, Bengal has resisted the BJP’s advances, its politics shaped instead by regional forces - first the Left Front, then Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC). Yet the arithmetic of the polls suggests that the BJP’s campaign built on organisational muscle and the promise of ‘parivartan’ (change) may have finally breached that wall. The TMC, meanwhile, appears to be grappling with anti-incumbency and persistent allegations of corruption. Still, one outlier poll suggests it could yet retain power, a reminder that Bengal’s electorate has a habit of confounding linear predictions. Here, more than anywhere else, the gap between projection and reality may prove widest. Steady Script If Bengal is volatile, the Assam outcome looks fairly settled. Across agencies, there is near unanimity that the BJP-led alliance is poised not just to retain power, but to do so comfortably. With the majority mark at 64 in the 126-member assembly, most estimates place the ruling coalition well above that threshold, in some cases approaching triple digits. The opposition Congress alliance, by contrast, appears stranded far behind. Under Himanta Biswa Sarma, the BJP has fused development rhetoric with a keen sense of identity politics, crafting a coalition that has proved resilient. A third consecutive term would underline the party’s deepening institutional hold over the state. Kerala, by contrast, may be returning to its old rhythm. For decades, the state has alternated power between the Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) with metronomic regularity. The LDF broke that pattern in the last election, securing an unprecedented second term. Exit polls now suggest that experiment may be short-lived. Most projections place the UDF comfortably above the 71-seat majority mark in the 140-member assembly, with the LDF trailing significantly. If borne out, this would reaffirm Kerala’s instinctive resistance to prolonged incumbency. Governance records matter here, but so does a deeply ingrained political culture that treats alternation as a form of accountability. Familiar Duel? Tamil Nadu, long dominated by its Dravidian titans, shows little appetite for disruption as per most exit polls, which place M.K. Stalin’s DMK-led alliance above the halfway mark of 118 in the 234-seat assembly. Yet, some sections have suggested a possible upset could be staged by actor Vijay’s TVK, the wildcard in the Tamil Nadu battle. Most polls, however, are clear that the opposition AIADMK alliance, though competitive, seems unlikely to unseat the incumbent DMK. In Puducherry, the smallest of the five contests, the implications may nonetheless be outsized. Exit polls give the BJP-led alliance a clear majority in the 30-seat assembly, relegating the Congress-led bloc to a distant second. Numerically modest, the result would carry symbolic weight. A victory here would further entrench the BJP’s presence in the south, a region where it has historically struggled to gain ground. For all their allure, exit polls are imperfect instruments. They rest on limited samples, extrapolated across vast and diverse electorates. In a country where millions vote, the opinions of a few thousand can only approximate reality and often fail to capture its nuances. There is also the problem of the ‘silent voter’ - individuals who either conceal their preferences or shift them late. Recent elections have offered ample reminders. In states such as Haryana and Jharkhand, and even in Maharashtra where margins were misjudged, exit polls have erred, and sometimes dramatically sp. Moreover, the modern exit poll is as much a media event as a methodological exercise. Packaged with graphics, debates and breathless commentary, it fills the void between voting and counting with a sense of immediacy that may be more theatrical than analytical. That said, to dismiss them entirely would be too easy. Exit polls do serve a purpose in sketching broad contours, highlighting regional variations and offering clues about voter sentiment. For political parties, they are early signals and act as tentative guides for observers. Taken together, this cycle’s exit polls suggest a broad, if tentative, pattern of the BJP consolidating in the east and north-east, and opposition alliances regaining ground in parts of the south, and continuity prevailing in key states. But patterns are not outcomes and only counted votes confer legitimacy. It is only on May 4 when the sealed electronic voting machines will deliver that clarity. They will determine whether Bengal witnesses a political rupture or a resilient incumbent, whether Assam’s stability holds, whether Kerala’s pendulum swings back, and whether Tamil Nadu stays its course. (The writer is a senior journalist and political analyst. Views personel.)

Let’s Talk About That Banana

Updated: Feb 5, 2025

From sacred relics to rotting fruit, the art world’s strange journey offers more than just a tasty bite.

Banana
Maurizio Cattelan, Comedian (banana taped to wall), 2019

The most talked about art work last year was an innocuous grocery store banana duct-taped – without much finesse – to a wall by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. Titled Comedian, the 2019 conceptual art piece comes with a certificate of authenticity and instructions on care and replacement when it rots. The 2nd of this limited three edition work was bought at auction in November 2024 by cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun for $6.2 million including buyer’s fees. Soon after, he ate this very expensive banana. Predictably, this theatre of performative lunacy on the part of the artist, Sotheby’s auction house, and the collector, was taken as evidence that the art world had indeed gone bananas. Author Brian C. Nixon wrote that it was “a commentary on the wild world of contemporary art, communicating how culture understands, interprets, and engages with the arts.”


How did we get from the serene Bodhisattva of Buddhist art to the rotting banana of Contemporary art?


It would be difficult to compress the entire history of art into this (or any) article – a task better left to wiser academics and scholars. To compress it in extremely broad strokes, suffice it to say for our purposes here, that there has not been a time in human history when art has not been created, and it has served a wide range of purposes and agendas over time. From the earliest very basic act of marking one’s presence, to decoration, documenting life, creating imagery for mythology and the supernatural, art was in a sense in service of society. Through a period of patronage from the church and crown, nobles and wealthy merchants, the artist belonged to a certain school, atelier or tradition and largely worked within the confines of stylistic and typological rules of an accepted canon. Of course, artists still found ways to innovate within the boundaries. Raja Ravi Varma went further, blending European romanticism with Hindu iconography to create original work that pays homage to more than one artistic and cultural tradition. As societies progressed and grew technologically advanced, forms of government changed and artists were no longer dependent solely on patronage. Nor were they bound to representing or narrating for an institution or higher authority of any kind, except by choice. Very quickly, artists moved from being the storytellers of a civilization’s traditions to breaking free of those limitations. They became critics of the very society and artistic culture from which they emerged. Many of the 19th and 20th century isms – Impressionism, Expressionism, Surrealism, Cubism, challenged whatever came before, and were constructed on manifestos and theories encompassing ideas from literature, linguistics, architecture and philosophy to opine on socio-political concerns. In the same vein, members of the Progressive Artists Group in Bombay sought to reclaim a post-colonial identity through Modernism, seeking a new vocabulary for Indian art which broke from European academicism.


Catellan’s banana is perhaps best understood as a direct descendent of the Dadaist movement which originated in Zurich as a reaction to the first world war and used satire, leaning towards the absurd, to critique dominant political and cultural ideology. The most well-known example of Dadaist art is Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 piece titled Fountain which was a store bought porcelain urinal hung upside down. Duchamp often repurposed readymade objects of mass production, to suggest that art was a “concept” rather than the “object” itself. Hence the term Conceptual Art.


Catellan has said that his 2019 Comedian, (the title itself announces that it is a spoof) is a “commentary on what we value.” In an earlier interview he posed the question: “On what basis does an object acquire value in the art system?” Does an everyday perishable become art to be gaped at because it is taped to a museum wall? Is a rotting fruit a metaphor for the ephemeral nature of life? The act of its ingestion was a not at all subtle reminder that the money spent on its acquisition was literally going down the toilet in the morning. The publicity it generated led to a world-wide discussion about the meaning and value of art in an increasingly commercial world where it is bought and sold like a commodity. Didn’t the banana then achieve what every artist wants their art to: engage with an audience, hold up a critical mirror to prevailing norms, start a conversation.


Not convinced? You are not alone. It may help to ponder these words from the recently deceased filmmaker David Lynch as you consider the $6.2 million banana: “I don’t know why people expect art to make sense. They are fine with the fact that life doesn’t make any sense.”


(The author is an architect, writer, editor, and artist. Her column meanders through the vibrant world of art, examining exhibitions, offering critiques, delving into theory and exploring everything in between and beyond.)

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