The Lok Sabha poll results stunned most spectators, with the BJP falling short of the majority mark despite its clarion call for over 400 seats. So what went wrong? How did the INDIA bloc parties engineer their revival?

Sanjay Singh, director of Lokniti CSDS, has been tracking and analysing Indian politics for decades. In this conversation with Newslaundry, Singh delved into the factors that led to the BJP’s decline, particularly in Uttar Pradesh.

The political analyst shared his insights on the caste dynamics at play in the elections, the Modi factor, consensus among people, and the triggers behind the BJP’s setback. “Prime Minister Modi’s magic is still intact…but there has been a decline in his ability to pull votes for the BJP.”

Singh said the “narrative of Hindutva” didn’t work and that “overconfidence has killed the BJP”, while the opposition’s rhetoric to “save the constitution” struck a chord with the people.

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On the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, something very unusual happened.

It had nothing to do with monetary policy, recession worries, or net-zero energy technologies. Instead, after a gap of eight years, union minister Smriti Irani granted NDTV an interview.

Irani sat down with NDTV’s editorial director Sonia Singh to talk about how the “India story was setting Davos on fire”, our triumph in “gender justice”, and why the Congress was “still hurt” that she had defeated Rahul Gandhi in Amethi in 2019.

It was what one might describe as a ‘soft’ interview – except for five questions Singh asked on issues like India’s growth being hyped, “super censorship”, and Modi’s remarks on minority outreach.

Read the full article here

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For us Kinnars, marriage is not made in heaven. We get married on a battlefield.”

This is what Amina said to me while she prepared for her wedding. Amina is a Kinnar, a term her community prefers over other alternatives like Khojja or Aravani or Hijra. She and hundreds of other Kinnars were queuing outside a small temple dedicated to Lord Aravan in the remote village of Koovagam, around 200 km from Chennai.

Their bridegroom was the stiff-moustached, red-faced, fiery-eyed deity who rules over the half-world to which they belong.

Every year, on a full-moon day in the Tamil month of Chithirai, a huge number of transgender people come to Koovagam to marry the village temple deity Aravan, who is also known as Koothandavar. It’s a pan-Indian, 18-day event that’s taken place for hundreds of years – certainly the biggest occasion for the community to come together and share experiences and opinions.

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