We love conspiracy theories in India. I am not surprised that after stock markets zoomed following the exit polls that showed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP-led National Democratic Alliance winning upwards of 350 seats in the 542-member Lok Sabha and then crashed as the real figure came close to 290, tongues started wagging. Some want to probe if exit pollsters were in league with stock market manipulators.
However, as someone who has covered elections from the ground, I think there is another way of looking at it, and that is exactly what some of the erring pollsters are admitting sheepishly. The voters hid the truth or played around it!
To understand why, I am tempted to share a joke from my college days about a common puzzle in which you are asked, "An ant is saying there are two ants to my front and, another says there are two behind my back, and the third one says there is one ant behind and one in front." The clever, classic answer is "three" but in a wicked standup comic act, a boy once said: "The third was lying!"
Lies are often discounted in surveys, but there is a theory behind this. People forget that democratic elections in politics involve secret ballots for a reason. Secrecy is a key part of a process in which those who vote are often subjected to all sorts of pressures, temptations, and even threats.