My good friends, and especially my very good friends, always remind me of my election forecast of 1991. I had stated, on the basis of opinion polls, that Rajiv Gandhi would win by an easy majority. The rest as they say is history. But my friends will never remind you, so I will, about the time I got the 1989 election "spot on"; or how in the last general election, I was the only forecaster who said that the Congress party, despite or because of Sonia Gandhi as its leader, would gain only 116 seats. The lowest forecast among all opinion polls was 150 seats. How many did Congress get - 114. The rest, unfortunately for me, is not history. Nobody is beating down my door asking me to pontificate on elections.

How did I get 1999 forecast so right when I got the 1991 so wrong? Simple, I changed my method of forecast -opinion polls were too expensive, too problematic, and too much subject to lying and interpretation. Why not forecast on the basis of how much improvement there was in the lives of the people? We all know that most politicians are corrupt, and that most individuals enter politics in order to make money. There are very few ways to beat the easy money of politics. There is drugs, but that is too risky. There was match fixing, so that is no longer an option. Being involved in any capacity in cricket, and especially as a selector, is an option, but the guards at the entry gate make sure you have the right credentials. Getting close to Godfather is easier. Which means running for elections is it! In that all time classic movie, The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman is offered only one piece of advice for a young man pursuing a career in 1969 "Plastics, my boy". Well, in India, "plastics" is cricket or politics, and the latter is easier.

I am sorry I got sidetracked. So what is the election model that did not make me famous (but should have)? Very simple, actually. The model looks at whether the incumbent has delivered on economic growth (faster than before) and inflation (lower than before). Of course governance matters, and panchayati raj matters, and empowerment matters. About as much as a hill of beans. Unfortunately, these oh-so-important variables are difficult to quantify and even more difficult to model. So the Occams razor plastic approach is to look at growth in incomes.

On that score the incumbents come out looking like roses this election year. If a politician is unfairly blamed for the drought why should she not be unfairly credited with bountiful rains? So once election season gets underway on Dec 1st, (with Lok Sabha elections likely occurring in Feb./March 2004), look for analysts to suddenly find out that incumbency is actually a positive. Now that does not mean that every incumbent would win, but it does imply that a significantly higher proportion of incumbents will.

There are several other implications of this simple model. Most importantly, that Congress will continue to do well in state elections (it is the incumbent) and the NDA, led by Mr. Vajpayee, the incumbent, will continue to win in the Lok Sabha. Does that mean that leadership does not matter? Of course not. Do the following mental experiment - think how many people you know who will consider voting for the NDA if Vajpayee was not the leader? Considerably, less, yes? Of course. Now do the equally simple mental experiment and think as to how many more seats the Congress will win if Ms. Sonia Gandhi were not the leader? Excepting some die-hard Congressi's with lumps in their throat, most will answer - a lot more. Proof that incumbency is not all that matters - there is something called leadership also.

Leadership is as difficult to measure as empowerment. But it has a distinct advantage - you know it when you see it. For proof, switch back to 1999, the time the economic model was the only right forecast. Just nine months earlier, in November 1998, the Congress had humbled the BJP in Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. How could it possibly lose, and lose so badly, just nine months later? The answer - incumbent leadership and the lack of opposition leadership.

While on the subject of leadership - as an improbable defense of an impossible position, Congressi's often lament the lack of leaders in their midst (besides, of course, the Gandhi family). "What are we to do - there are no leaders within the party" is the most popular refrain. In the same breath, they feel justifiable proud of ruling fifteen states. So why not Sheila Dikshit for the big one? She has run Delhi extremely well. Or what about Karnataka's Krishna, or even Digvijay if he loses MP? Or Rajasthan's Gehlot? Or Manmohan Singh - his economic leadership transformed India, and his political leadership can bring about governance. The list is long - that is how much leadership there is within the Congress.

There is one additional forecast for national elections. This forecast is more problematic, more futuristic, but is in the cards. The leadership for this conclusion comes from observing elections in that other large democracy, USA. After having a love affair with the Kennedys for a decade, the Americans switched off, tuned out. No one is quite sure why the reaction was/is so vehement, but it is there. And there enough for even the Kennedy's to realize that they do not have any chance to even enter the gates of the final round, let alone win the Presidency. Now I recognize that India is a less developed economy, and therefore with stronger connections with its feudal past. The Nehru- Gandhis have either significantly affected, and/or ruled, this country for not just one decade but eight decades. It is an easy forecast to make that the Indian electorate will one day tune out of the Gandhi family. Of course it will happen some time in the next several decades (or hundreds of years if you are a Congressi). It is riskier to forecast that the tuning out time is now. Sorry, Priyanka and Rahul, no fault of yours, it is just that while national politics is the same old song, it is now sung with a different tune.