This is how News is reported:

A high level panel was setup under the leadership of the ex-President of India, Mr. Ram Nath Kovind. And the panel recommended having simultaneous polls in the center and state.

When the news came, all media houses called it Breaking News!

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Let’s rewind back several years.

Ram Nath Kovind has been a BJP leader for many, many years. In 2015, the BJP proposed the name of Ram Nath Kovind as the governor of Bihar and this was accepted by the then president.

In 2017, the BJP again picked Ram Nath Kovind as their candidate for the Presidential election and subsequently Ram Nath Kovind won the election by a two-third majority. He became the 14th President of India!

And he completed his presidential term in 2022.

So- a BJP veteran, first became the Governor of Bihar with the backing of BJP and then the President of India again with the backing of the BJP.

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The BJP has been pushing for the idea of simultaneous elections. So when a panel was appointed under Ram Nath Kovind’s leadership, was it any surprise that the panel did it’s homework and came back and recommended having simultaneous polls. Exactly what the BJP had wanted.

If the panel had recommended not having simultaneous elections – that would’ve been breaking news. At least to me.

We humans tend to reciprocate. We are taught and conditioned from childhood to reciprocate. Almost every religion looks down upon the ungrateful. If people have been kind to us, we tend to be kind to them. If people have been unkind to us, we tend to exact revenge.

Now, I have no doubt regarding the integrity or the capability of Mr. Ram Nath Kovind. But the way we humans are conditioned, it is unlikely that he or anybody in his place would betray those who have helped him first become the governor of Bihar and then the President of India. In fact, would the BJP have picked anybody who is likely to provide an opinion different from it (BJP)?

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My agenda is not politics. My agenda was simply to highlight that what the media reports is just events as they happen. If you consume too much news you are likely to miss the patterns. Therefore we need to dispassionately step back to see the patterns at play. A lot of people come up with insider information and conspiracy theories etc. What I am saying is even more fundamental than that. Humans behave in a certain way because that is encoded within us like reciprocity bias, and therefore it should be no surprise when that behavior plays out.

-Cheers!