Amid the sea of humanity, where does the real voter stand?

All said and done, what is going to happen in Telangana – India’s youngest state, where two national parties as well as one strongly entrenched regional party are moving heaven and earth to capture power?
As of now, the much-talked-about ‘wave’ seems to wavering, suggesting to political weathermen that anything could happen, given the enormity of the stakes of the contending parties. A win in this crucial election would give the parties tremendous firepower to face the upcoming General Election.
For Bharat Rashtra Samithi chief and TS Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, a significant victory in the upcoming election would ensure a massive number of Lok Sabha seats and corresponding bargaining power for his party; while for the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party, coming out in flying colours in the election would strengthen their respective national political ground to face the Lok Sabha elections more with enhanced vigour. Corruption, family rule, and development are the core issues that the parties have chosen to outsmart one another in reaching out to the electorate.
Over the past three days, Telangana has attracted national attention as the top brass of the BJP and the Congress are camping in the state, taking the poll fight to newer heights every day by targeting the ruling BRS, which has been striving for a hat-trick win. One curious fact of the election campaign is that no party is targeting the other party directly. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks of BRS, he links it with the Congress and Rahul targets CM KCR and says that BJP and BRS are two sides of the same coin. There is no punch in such indirect criticism. The arrows of the parties, having missing the intended targets, make people wonder as to what exactly is happening and what the real intention of the contending parties is.
In any election campaign, rival parties target one another without giving any scope for suspicion. In the case of Telangana, each of the major contending parties is facing a typical situation in which it is compelled to link the other two rivals just to gain an upper hand. This gives room for suspicion as to who is behind whom, and who is opposing whom. This is where the dilemma comes to the fore wherein the voter is confused and the wave is diffused.
Huge attendance at the star campaigners’ public meetings cannot be the criterion to assess or gauge the public pulse towards the respective parties. All three contending parties have been receiving huge and enthusiastic crowds. There have been many examples to prove that the hugeness of public attendance can be deceptive and that it cannot be the yardstick for assessing a party’s cutting edge. In the 2004 election for the united Andhra Pradesh Assembly, then chief minister and TDP president Chandrababu conducted a very huge public meeting in the Parade Grounds. Seeing the sea of humanity, everyone thought it would be Chandrababu again. But Babu tasted defeat and YSR won hands down.
It appears that taking a cue from such precedents, political parties have started conducting bus yatras or padayatras to have direct contacts with the public, rather than addressing huge crowds without knowing their pulse. The manifestoes of parties and the assurances given in them may be the driving factor for most people to come to these public meetings and at times a great realization comes at such gatherings.
After all this, the real voter will come out to give his ultimate punch on the D-day. In order to find out the real voters, the parties have to be realistic in their efforts to convince them, rather than play to the gallery to get wider applause. Knowing the real voter is the only way to attain power. The respective parties have got the necessary political boost with the speeches of their national leaders. Now it is over to the voter, with the deadline to convince him or her in a last-ditch effort nearing fast.