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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.)

Singapore's Health Care System: Some Lessons to Be Learnt

Updated: Oct 25, 2024

Singapore's Health Care System

Singapore’s health care system is today considered to be one of the best, if not the best in the world. Business Week magazine rated it as the healthiest country on the planet. How did Singapore achieve this spectacular feat at less than half the cost in comparable countries? A chapter titled “The Remarkable Healthcare Performance in Singapore” in the book “Great Policy Successes,” edited by Mallory E. Compton and Paul ‘T Hart, helps us to gain some insights into this extraordinary phenomenon.


The People’s Action Party (PAP), which formed the island city’s first independent government in 1959, inherited from its British colonial rulers a system of free inpatient care through public hospitals. The PAP retained and incrementally increased the arrangements while introducing modest reforms. In 1965, public expenditure on healthcare formed 50% of total spending on health. The 1960s and 1970s witnessed the expansion of public health clinics entirely owned and operated by the government, which provided basic outpatient services. A pivotal point to note is that side-by-side, the government worked in a meticulous and concerted way on the overall improvement of sanitation, housing, and education, which, in tandem with expanded public health measures, were pivotal in improving the population’s health.


Educational attainment, home ownership, and public amenities such as clean drinking water, solid waste disposal, and housing policies gradually saw the households that earlier lived in slums and tenements in the 1950s transition to public housing with access to electricity, gas, potable water, and toilets have greatly ameliorated Singapore’s health outcomes.


In addition to insurance schemes, like Medisave, Medishield, and Medifund, there are other schemes financed from the government’s general budget. The Community Health Assistant Scheme offers additional grants to low-income households for outpatient treatment. The Pioneer Generation and Merdeka subsidies reduce insurance premiums and co-payments for select groups of elderly Singaporeans. Medifund was introduced in 1993 for those citizens who could not afford to pay their medical bills. However, very stringent tests are required to qualify for the benefits of this scheme.


Since 2003, public hospitals (and some years later private hospitals also), have been required to publish their average bill sizes (expenditure), and the distribution along the mean, which includes charges for room, treatment, surgery, laboratory tests, etc. for various common conditions and procedures. This data is published on the Ministry of Health’s webpage.


This resulted in the Ministry of Health (MOH) introducing benchmarks for medical fees, jointly developed by doctors, hospitals, and other stakeholders in 2018. Such benchmarks are expected to give doctors a yardstick against which to measure their prices while giving patients a better idea of comparative costs.


Providers must now contribute data regarding admission, visit history, hospital discharge, laboratory tests, radiology results, history of medication, surgeries, and procedures, allergies, adverse drug reactions, immunisations, etc. to the National Electronic Health Records (NEHR) platform established in 2011.


One could argue that all these reforms and helpful policies are easy to implement in a country the size of Singapore—a country like India with a much larger geographical and demographic size brings along with this, complex problems and outcomes. Also, Singapore is run by a government that is very different from India’s. The range of data that providers have to contribute to the NEHR in Singapore will, in India, be opposed, citing a violation of many individuals’ privacy as far as their personal medical information is concerned. There is no question of any opposition to such exercises in Singapore. The government has taken many unpopular steps, especially regarding healthcare, unopposed. Lastly, the out-of-pocket healthcare expenditure is very high in Singapore—that need not be emulated, especially for the poorer sections of our population.


Looking at the systematic and effective way Singapore has implemented key measures, it's clear there are lessons for India. Improvements in sanitation, housing, and education, along with expanded public health efforts, have rapidly improved the population’s health. Similar steps could benefit India's people as well.

Additionally, for patients, having data that facilitates the comparison of medical costs in a country like India where medical prices seem to be increasing at an alarming rate (mostly for the economically deprived sections of the population) is extremely helpful.


India still considers itself a welfare state, despite all the liberalisation that commenced in the early 1990s. Singapore’s achievements will help to serve as a beacon to our government. Again, not all the measures practiced will suit us, but we could selectively attempt to implement those that do.


(The author is an independent researcher based in Mumbai. Views personal.)

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