Return of bad ideas

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party, campaigning in the ongoing elections without their usual big ideas, are locked in a race to the bottom with the Opposition with unimaginative politics

For a quarter-century now, a pattern has emerged in our electoral cycle where three important states go to the polls about six months before the general elections. While it is tempting and fashionable to call these the semifinals before the big final next summer, it is also erroneous. As we have known since 2003, these elections usually provide utterly misleading cues about the general elections. You can, however, often find in these polls bigger ideas that will dominate national politics in the years to follow.

This ongoing campaign, however, has marked the return of a season of small ideas, usually