Gujarat election results: Narendra Modi is no longer Gujarat's chosen one
Supporters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi are averse to young leadership outside of the BJP.
They have crudely - and strategically - attacked Kanahiya Kumar, Gurmehar Kaur, Jignesh Mevani, Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakor and so forth.
This in a country whose 65 per cent of 125-crore population is 35 or under. This in a country where more than 60 crore people are under 25 years of age.
In the Gujarat campaign, not many young leaders worth their salt were visible under the lotus banner. The BJP's entire campaign centred around the prime minister, himself 67, or his trusted aide Amit Shah.
Gujarat model: Myth or reality?
I completely agree with Dr Nikita Sud, a professor of development at the University of Oxford, for her assessment that Modi cannot be solely credited for Gujarati prosperity.
Located along the west coast, the state has been one of India's most industrialised, historically. "There's a history of business, trade and having a solid economic foundation. To Mr Modi's credit he hasn't destroyed it, but he is not the originator of it," she told the BBC.
Her analysis stems from the period when the country's current prime minister was Gujarat's CM - from 2001 to 2014.
Modi became a darling of the corporate world primarily over generous tax breaks for industrial investments in the state under his command.
Social media, then still in its infancy, exploded with Modi eulogies as mainstream TV, national and international, cluttered airwaves with the term "policy paralysis" for the embattled UPA-2 led by the Oxford-educated economist, Manmohan Singh.
The overall narrative favoured the BJP handsomely in 2014. Young, aspirational voters rallied around Modi and as did small- and middle-income businesses.
Fundamentalism, politics of hate
But what happened a year later, if viewed objectively, changed the course of polity.
A blood-curdling event unfolded in the sleepy village of Bisara at Dadri in a matter of minutes in September 2015. A Muslim blacksmith, Mohammad Akhlaq, and his son were battered by Hindu neighbours over rumours of cow slaughter. The father died.
Akhlaq's death revived a dangerous wave of Hindu vigilantism against fellow Muslims, supposedly over cattle transport.
Self-styled cow protectors were even filmed in Gujarat publicly flogging four young Dalits for skinning carcasses of the revered animals.
Modi's warning to gau rakshaks aside, deadly assaults in the name of cow protection across north India reflected the ruling BJP's co-option of violent fundamentalism.
It brought to the fore contradictions between the reality and the hype around the former Gujarat chief minister.
His promises of development for all and the "progressive" vision for India he shared ahead of 2014 were overwhelmed by sectarianism that has punctured growth - economic and psychological - periodically since 1947.
Knee-jerk economic policy
Modi's abrupt note ban and shoddy implementation of the GST, with unprecedented celebrations over taxation in Parliament, ended up hurting the BJP's core middle-income constituency.
Forget employment generation, the twin measures delivered a bloody nose to existing jobs in the massive unorganised sector.
As multiple, man-made crises struck Indians, the prime minister's political coterie was pretty successful, at least on national TV, in deflecting attention from logic to emotion for quite some time.
Cannot fool all, all the time
But there goes a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln: "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."
Given current trends, it's clear rural Gujarat, ironically for Modi and Shah, has refused to be fooled. Agrarian distress appears to have driven voters away from a jingoistic BJP.
Backed by local youth power encapsulated in Patel and Mewani, Rahul Gandhi's Congress has punched a hole in the Modi-Shah turf. This despite attempts by the saffron brigade to turn Gujarat elections into a communal vote.
What remained entrenched in the minds of rural voters was economy. Obsessed with the "he said, she said" brand of TV journalism, the BJP, on the other hand, has failed miserably in addressing issues of the ordinary citizen. Rather, it has compounded his problems with demonetisation and an imperfect GST.
India wants young, innovative leaders
Rural Gujarat's not just a negative vote against the BJP. Instead, it's a positive mandate for the state's young leadership lampooned, derided and tarred by Modi loyalists.
The state is back with the BJP. But the vote has set in motion the process for 2019, where Rahul Gandhi will be the fulcrum for a secular, energetic and young breed of Indians wanting to take the country forward - and not back in time. More than just an alarm for sectarian forces.
Also read: 10 fallouts of Gujarat election results