Who says there is no inclusive growth in the Private Sector ?
Mayawati maybe bending over backwards to usher Reservations in the Private Sector but the mainstream media has stolen a march on her.
Today there is more Social Justice in the 24×7 News Channels than in the PPP ventures of Uttar Pradesh.
Puzzled !
Well, how else would you explain the Affirmative Action in the mainstream media that ensures no pollster is left behind.
Still puzzled !
Well dig this.
The first time you make a mistake at your workplace you probably would be excused with a caution that it be avoided?in the futur?and the mistake if no an expensive one will likely be treated an exception. On the other hand if the mistake was an expensive one, it would likely be probed, root causes would be established and measures would be put in place to prevent even an unintentional recurrence.
Now if you make the same mistake for the second time it would likely invite accountability for the slip, responsibility for its fallout and penal action for punishment.
But then none of it for our pollsters. They may make the same mistake repeatedly over and over again but they are never held accountable for their wrong predictions, there is never a question of holding anyone responsible and one may as well forget seeking penal action for punishment.
The only parallel for such an unprecedented forgiving attitude in the work place is Affirmative Action.
So the question Offstumped is posing to Yogendra Yadav, who famously proposed?a Social Disadvantage Index, is
How socially disadvantaged are you pollsters that you are never held up to any performance benchmarks and there is always a next time to get your act right ?
One may dismiss away exit polls as entertainment and pollsters as useful idiots but not anymore.
Yogendra Yadav went beyond mere entertainment and crystal ball gazing. He went on record on the eve of polling in Gujarat, to influence the outcome with his now infamous “democracy is taking revenge on Narendra Modi” tagline. He was not playing the role of a mere pollster who was passively observing. He admitted to a role and an agenda that went much beyond passive observation. This paragraph sums it all up
Another form is the rise of media, and not just the Delhi-based English and secular media, as counter-establishment. This has prevented Modi from setting the agenda of elections. This election is not about the macro economic achievements of Gujarat. Those achievement might impress the middle class urban Gujarati but have very little value outside this charmed circle. Ordinary people wish to see what these have meant in their own lives. Speak to any poor Gujarati in rural or urban areas about these achievements and he will narrate to you the tale of his woes in obtaining the basic necessities of life. Modi?s well cultivated aura of omniscience and omnipotence begins to boomerang here: the voters hold him responsible for everything, from price rise and lack of employment to agrarian crisis, the state of BPL card and having to pay electricity bills.
For someone with a habit for getting his math horribly wrong Yogendra Yadav’s influence is not limited to poll time prognostication. Someone had suggested in jest that perhaps Yadav needs a saffron dose of Vedic Mathematics to get his math right on the exit polls.? Reason, he had been at the forefront of the UPA’s Detox campaign on NCERT Text Books. Those very same textbooks that have given academic sanction to the NHRC’s lie of non-existent mass graves in Gujarat. Yes graves that were characterized as “Mass Graves” even before they were dug while the media and the NHRC conveninetly ignore the CPI-M’s shame in West Bengal with the daily discovery of multiple graves by the CRPF in Nandigram.
So Yadav has a record here of insinuating Gujarat based on half-truths with little respect for facts.
Think of the message this sends to the generations of students who will be moulded by textbooks that have Yogendra Yadav’s imprints all over them. That it is ok to peddle an agenda based on half-truths, it is ok to influence electoral outcomes with these half truths camouflaged as science and that it is ok to get away with all of it despite being repeatedly wrong.
CNN-IBN that has been promoting Yadav’s psephology has a responsibility to the people of Gujarat and India at large. Rajdeep Sardesai belatedly has attempted a course correction in this op-ed in the Hindustan Times but that is not enough.
There has to be accountability and punishment.
Offstumped Bottomline: It is unacceptable to peddle half-truths and a political agenda at the same time and get away with it after being repeatedly wrong. If CNN-IBN wants to redeem its credibility and survive as a viable media house it must hold Yogendra Yadav accountable for patently wrong exit polls that were hand in glove with motivated and biased editorials. As punishment it must sever any business relationship it may have with his organisation?failing which it must be prepared for a public boycott of its news channels.
Filed under: Gujarat Polls 2007, Uncategorized
[...] Offstumped placed an interesting blog post on No Pollster Left BehindHere’s a brief overview [...]
[...] Offstumped put an intriguing blog post on No Pollster Left BehindHere’s a quick excerpt [...]
Yogengra Yadav is a Marxist bigot masquerading as a pollster. He’ll be shamelessly back next time again, spouting the same commie venom, because the Congress media needs commie allies to help pretend that it is not Congress media.
Hi Yossarin,
To show the double tongues of the media, i would like to share something, where can i send the data?
Vijay – you can email me at yossarin@nationalinterest.in
A start can be made by suspending the licenses of Channels like NDTV and CNN-IBN for min. 3 months….
Mr. Yogendra “Communist” Yadav should be sent to jail for 3 months to teach a lesson to the rest of the media that they should be punished for trying to influence the election in Gujarat by spreading false rumours…..
Hi! Yossarin, it is really too much to expect any objectivity from these people.I agree with you that had they been in any other job with accountability they would have got a kick on their ass long time back.
[...]MSM ‘participated’ in this election as an ‘interested party’ – where as its mandate is to report objectively and truthfully- and they threw all their weight (!) behind the single objective to defeat MODI by ‘hook or by crook’! No tricks in their bag were spared, motivated sting operations, singularly biased reporting against Modi, questionable and motivated ‘exist’ polls, screaming headlines, breathless accusatory tone, etc. etc.[...]
Veni, Vidi, Vici: Narrendra Modi.
http://theprudentindian.wordpress.com/2007/12/25/veni-vidi-vici-narendra-modi/
Care to give a look on this.
PI.
Rajdeep Sardesai, worried as if modi has already become the prime minister, comes up with some more nonsense in his blog here:
http://www.ibnlive.com/blogs/rajdeepsardesai/1/3392/the-modi-phenomenon-busting-the-myths.html
these guys are worried it will not be easy for them to be in the business without a Sikhandi in power!
not having any other option except accepting the truth that modi’s was a comprehensive win spanning both urban and rural areas, he tries to divert the issue of IBN’s polarization by talking about modi’s future role.
and he seems to have taken offstumped too much personally, some of the wordings are taken straight from this blog:
The claim that Modi represents a new India, yearning to break free from feudal snobbery and liberal hypocrisies
and he couldnt resist his frustration about this blog here:
Modi too may find that not every state electorate will embrace him with the readiness that Gujarat and the blogosphere has.
Quite an article…
http://www.haindavakeralam.com/HkPage.aspx?PAGEID=5186&SKIN=B
The pollsters never will be punished because they are not accountable to the general public but to those bosses whose very agenda is to be biased. Enough has been written about the shameless media and it’s “overreach” (remember the articles/edits in Hindu about the judicial overreach..which simply meant any instance in which congress/communists were chastised). I would wonder if there is any constitutional way to tackle these SOB’s. Just as we are not allowed to discuss cases which are subjudice, is there a way to punish these people who try to influence the electorate by their stupid and biased analyses?
You have hit the nail on the head, Yossarin. I have always failed to understand how exit polls which predict the winners with a near enough accuracy, in other countries, fail to come even remotely close in India. One can understand a few opinionated psephologists and spin doctors deliberately twisting facts and figures and trying to influence the outcome, as in Gujarat, but its surprising how almost all of them invariably get it wrong – always. And not just in Gujarat. Even predictions for UP and Punjab, in recent times, had gone awry.
Maybe, there is a complete lack of scientific understanding of the entire process, in which case these media cells would do well to train their experts and pollsters in the nuances of sampling and statistical analysis. It was really funny to hear Prannoy Roy adding the disclaimer of the “fear factor” which can lead to results slightly off the mark, as far as the NDTV results were concerned. Wonder what all caveats they would be issuing in future?
Or perhaps, as someone pointed out, to be on the safer side, we might soon see pollsters giving much wider ranges to political parties – something like – “BJP might win between 50-150 seats” kind of nonsense.
Doesn’t the Press Council of India have any regulations/ guidelines to check media bias, particularly such blatant ones?
http://presscouncil.nic.in/
The following article by Tarun Vijay tells the story of Modi’s win in an emphatic way.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Tarun_Vijay_Saffron_Surge/articleshow/2649668.cms
Hi Yossarin
I continue to be a trenchant critic of Yogendra’’studio’ psephology which reflects his ‘far left meets Lohia’ world view more than ground realities .We were probably among the earliest voices in blogosphere to comment on his ‘dubious’ methodology and ‘bizzare’ findings of those State of Nation polls(sample findings-Amartya Sen is a ‘role model’ for Indian youth , near simple majority for Congress in any ensuing Lok Sabha polls).Remember ‘Yogendra’ even responding to one of my posts that i wrote quoting you.
Even during the just concluded Gujarat elections his role appears to be not above board.I was recently alerted to his column – he had admitted that ‘raw data’ of exit polls were ‘tampered’ to scale down the seat projections for BJP.
Having said this,i think Yogendra and for that matter CNN-IBN have chastened considerably compared to the heydays of outright ‘campaign’ journalism .I might be suffering from delusions of grandeur but i do feel bloggers like Nitin/you have definitely played a big role in that.I can’t think of any other causative factor .In limited sense, few blogs/e-forums like BR are the only wortwhile media ‘watchdogs’ in this country.I could see the discmfort on Rajdeep’s face when Teesta was indulging in her nauseating secspeak
Its a welcome trend that Rajdeep and his team are atleast attempting to listen to the voice of the netizens and as a result forced to confront their own prejudices .As keen observer of the ‘psycops’ that media indulge in,i can observe Rajdeep becoming more nuanced (no more virulent and vituperrious attacks).Even his recent HT piece attempts to strike a balance .But no such luck wth The Hindu and NDTV .Save for those stunning beauties who double up as anchors NDTV should soon be reduced to fringe player .
I think Prannoy Roy and Prakash Karat living under the same roof and commie sympathies are too facile to explain away the visceral hatred that NDTV nurtures towards Modi underscored by their act of seeking professional pyschologists to ‘decode’ the Modi demon (Married to sisters,they live in a beautiful Delhi Bungalow .Information courtesy-Tehelka)
I sincerely feel that there is a case for employing pyschologists to understand the hatred NDTV/The Hindu etc have for Modi.Some questions to ponder over
Is it a caste prejudice against someone who has emerged out of nowehere to challenge the entrenched parasitic socialist class?
Is it Class bias?
Is that the very face of bearded Modi replusive to ‘beautiful’,well-cultured and sophsticated Delhi intelligenstia eptitomised by likes of Karat Family and is that why Seema Mustafa called Modi the ‘Ugly Indian’ and picked Karat as her ‘Man of the Year’?
Is it because Modi is the face of revolt against the metropolitan pseudo-intllectual elite?
Is it because he is the poster boy of country that wants to get rid of ‘Nehruvian’ Tyraany?
These are ‘deep’ questions.I think someone Ashish Nandy can help us understanding it(:(:.
Hey, congratulations on the Modi win!
Just saw you had opened comments again.
Quick points.
1. Yes, exit polls in India are as good as useless.
2. Media wants some kind of predictions, they get it from exit polls.
3. They got the UPA win wrong, the Mayavati margin wrong, and the Modi factor messed up.
4. There is no law against getting exit polls wrong.
5. They will continue for a long time despite their repeated failures.
Torture and humiliation of pilgrims
CPM Congress makes Sabarimala pilgrimage chaotic
By S. Chandrasekhar
But for the past few years, especially after the CPM came to power in the 2006 elections, evil forces represented by CPM, the Travancore Devaswom Board (government-controlled body ruling the temple) and the Islamic jehadis are making the pilgrimage torturous and humiliating.
The latest threat to the Sabarimala pilgrimage is from the foul-mouthed CPM Devaswom Minister G. Sudhakaran and the constantly fighting Travancore Devaswom Board president and members. The president C.K. Gupthan is son-in-law of CPM patriarch E.M.S. Namboodiripad and the members Narayanan and Sumathikutty Amma belong to CPI and RSP, both CPM allies.
Bad roads and parking facilities
Water shortage and drainage mess
Fleecing by traders and government buses
Chaotic crowd management and rude police
Threats by jehadis
Shortage of aravana
BJYM, VHP and Hindu Aikya Vedi leaders like Kummanam Rajasekharan have called for the disbanding of the Devaswom Board and handing over the temple to devotees for proper administration.
Shame on the UPA-CPM which spends crores of rupees for Haj pilgrimage and the Haj House in Kozhikode, Kerala, built at a cost of Rs.10 crore and inaugurated by the Chief Minister in the presence of jehadis like Kanthapuram Musaliar.
Dear EVERYONE
If u all have been seeing NDTV/CNN then must have noted that Game has started.
This time is Orissa where Election is now Soon.
A little away from the topic. Did anyone notice the Media coverage on the slaying of alleged terrorists some 2 days ago in UP supposedly out to kill Mayawati?
Compare that with the legendary coverage of Ishrat Jehan killed in Gujarat few years ago. Gosh. Start News ran a show EK THEE ISHRAT in an attempt to draw out tears.
@ Matt
‘Hey, congratulations on the Modi win!’
I can feel the PAIN. If you see a media person, please hug them, give them a shoulder to cry their psuedo-secular psuedo-liberal heart out =) It’s one thing the media being accused of being BIASED, its another thing media being laughed at as the VILLAGE IDIOT.
‘1. Yes, exit polls in India are as good as useless.’
Yes I agree, but wouldnt you say so is the Indian media that subscribes to them ?
‘2. Media wants some kind of predictions, they get it from exit polls’
Maybe try the satta market next time. OH SNAP, they already tried that, yikes =) ’some kind of prediction’ it is, well, I got a prediction, the MEDIA this year is going to be anywhere from PROFOUNDLY RETARDED to just HARMLESSLY IDIOTIC.
‘4. There is no law against getting exit polls wrong.’
Again, I agree, But it does defy common sense.
‘5. They will continue for a long time despite their repeated failures.’
Isnt it comforting to know, incompetence and non-performance will be rewarded forever ? I bet the Soviet communists felt REAL comfortable before the USSR melted away.
The excuse for the blunder was equally funny. IBN said they probably overestimated the wrong responses given by the respondents to the exit poll. In this excuse, they never mentioned the assumption behind such an estimation by the channel. The assumption was that there is a fear-factor in Gujarat and hence a lot of those who responded to the exit polls may have wrongly reported their vote in favour of Modi out of fear! It now turns out that Modi won with 50% votes..4% more than what Yogendra’s poll had predicted after estimating the number of people who may have lied in the exit polls. Assuming scientific nature of exit polls, Yogendra should have got the actual number at 50% and hence estimated 4% people lied because of fear. Thus the results not only prove his estimate of fear to be wrong but the entire thesis that there is fear-psychosis in Gujarat to be horrendously wrong.
Aryan, mostly agree with you – in some points, for different reasons, but as an anti-Modi liberal, I think media is idiotic often.
Sachin Purohit:
The assumption was that there is a fear-factor in Gujarat…
Very true Sachin! I remember a discussion on one of the channels (dont remember which, it was one of the three English channels, NDTV, CNN-IBN or Times Now) where there was almost 5 minutes spent when everyone kind of agreed that theres a “fear factor” in Gujarat. And that was one of the reasons why they could probably get their exit polls wrong.
From the final result, it looks like, the “fear if any was actually in the minds the pollsters – who were fearing that Modi Might win, so lets show him to be losing atleast in the exit polls!
As a fellow liberal, I agree with Comrade Matt’s points. But those points by themselves reveal nothing, answer nothing. We need to ask questions. For instance, why will exit polls (or opinion polls) continue for a long time despite their repeated failures? Because in India, they serve a political function. As Yogendra Yadav admitted kicking and screaming, the field results are often manipulated to project an outcome in line with the pollster’s prejudices and political preferences. Opinion/exit polls are a political tool meant to influence/manipulate public opinion in India, and that is why they will continue for a long time, which is as long as political campaigns based on propaganda continue, which is as long as anti-liberals like communists and the dirty tricks department of Congress exist.
Someone correct me if I am wrong.
1.16% of people who did not respond in the exit polls
2. Usually, the no response people are ignored in the analysis.
3. Yogendra concluded the large percentage of non responses was due to an atmosphere of fear.
4. Yogendra and his number crunching friend decided it was too large a percentage to ignore and attempted to obtain a signal out of this 16%.
5. Using bhery bhey sophisticated eshatishtical techniques based on the assumption that most of those who did not respond were actually congress voters they came out with figures which still showed BJP to be winning narrowly.
I think Yogendra Yadav might not have deliberately fudged the figures, but that this prejudices lead him to make incredibly stupid assumptions. This makes him something even worse, incompetent.
Indian Expres while inferring the data to draw its conclusions for exit poll was saying that it was often seen that Modi supporters were over reporting and similarly Modi opponents were subdued and often hesitant in telling their choice. Express said that it had made adjustments accordingly. As it turns out Express’ perception of these exaggerations by Modi supporters and the reverse of it were nothing but its own jaundiced vision.
I actually saw one journalist having the guts to discuss how psephologists like to use their leeway to ‘push’ the results the way their bias leans.
CNN-IBN/Express’s post-election projection, incidentally, shows 1/4 of Gujarati Muslims, 1/3 of Dalits, and almost 1/2 of Tribal voters voted for BJP – something that the Congress should look at with deep concern…that the BJP, if it offers up a better quality of life, can capture Muslim votes (particularly the younger, urbanized, educated and better off), without having to field minority candidate or create special minority policies. Lets see what happens in Himachal tonight, where the Congress has basically conceded defeat already.
janpar – will be watching
Why blame only Yogendra Yadav , what Dr. ( What ???) Prannoy Roy and Barkha ( Kadka) Dutt, they have been at the helm of affairs in tarnishing the BJP. Why dint you all watch all that was said by them on NDTV on Dec. 23, 2007, they almost were deciding on the new Congress gvt. in GUJ at 10:00 AM, then came the shocker in 30 mins when BJP took a lead of say 41 seats and you could not but stop laughing at Dr.What and Kadka’s faces, anyways the Dr. vamoozed in 30 mins and Kadka continued ranting till another hour and vanished to clear that egg on her face.
I believe, Yogendra Yadav is product of the quota system in our country and so whatever he says must be discounted 99.99%, Yadavji…go back to your buffaloes you are a joke…
ibn and ndtv should be banned for a certain period for their wrong propagation about modi and gujarat………
[...] No Pollster Left Behind – 25th December 2007 [...]