The innate wisdom of this large, far-flung, often illiterate electorate has been brought out convincingly more than once. The most striking was the unseating of the Congress Party, and Indira Gandhi personally, after the Emergency excesses in 1977; bringing her back to power in 1980 when the Janata government had discredited itself; unseating of state governments time and again, leading to the recognition of the anti-incumbency factor; throwing out the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in 2004 in spite of its ‘India Shining’ claims; and finally inflicting a humiliating defeat on
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