Modi and the BJP have to return to the political grind, build state leaders, rethinkthe strategyof discarding old allies.
The law of averages catches up with even the best. As it seems to have with a quaintly named star in the psephology/opinion poll business, Today's Chanakya. It had built a reputation for getting its forecasts right, sometimes to the last decimal point, its high point being the forecast of 340 for the NDA in the General Election this summer. Now it has got it wrong twice in succession. In both Maharashtra and Jharkhand, it had predicted an almighty BJP sweep, but both turned out to be victories on points, the first quite incomplete and the latest somewhat less so, but narrow. Chanakya has been psephology's equivalent of the stock markets' big bull and its estimates have been outliers by far. The reason it worked so far was simple. There was a Modi/BJP wave, so an outlier forecast was safer. Like all waves, however, this one too has begun to wane-not reverse, just wane-and so simple old algebra can no longer work.
