India Rising wants governance, opportunity and dignity – at home and in world

The election was called at 10:50 am by the external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj who congratulated Prime Minister Narendra Modi and thanked the electorate for this verdict. The votes were still being counted but the early morning trends were clear—this is a wave, a NaMo wave that is bigger than the 2014 wave. For an incumbent government to get this kind of a result tells its own story. That story is captured in the Sensex as it hit a lifetime high of 40,000 by 10:30 am. Bond prices liked the verdict and were up too. The two indicators of money were both exuberant as is the electorate that has demonstrated its maturity and ability to decode complex issues in Verdict 2019. I wrote at the beginning of Election 2019 that this is an India Rising-election that will change the old narrative of benevolent maai-baap handouts. Verdict 2019 gets me to add to this narrative—this election is a turning point in the electoral narrative of India that has for long played on caste, religion and election freebies.

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Opinion | Markets cheer exit poll result with a 3.75% jump. How are you feeling?

Ahead of an event, we were gathered in the 25th floor office of the chairman, in the iconic Bombay Stock Exchange building. A building you enter after paying obeisance to the five foot high, eight foot long, one tonne raging bull stationed at the entrance to the building. A group of fund managers, mutual fund CEOs, intermediaries and I, the outsider from Delhi, are hanging around waiting for the event to begin. The talk, four days before the exit poll, was of course on the results. A straw poll around the room yields a base line 230 seats to the BJP and the possibility of a stand-alone majority government again. And what happens to the market? A 10% jump is not unexpected if the BJP gets a clear majority—markets like stability and continuity—say some of the fund managers present.

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