Narendra Modi’s first declaration of victory didn’t come in the capital New Delhi, or his home state of Gujarat or even Hinduism’s holiest city of Varanasi, where he ran for parliament. It came in the form of a message on his Twitter Inc. account.

“India has won. Good days are ahead,” Modi wrote to his more than four million followers on the microblogging platform, after official results released May 16 showed his Bharatiya Janata Partywinning a landslide victory over the Congress party led by the Gandhi dynasty.

That his victory message was retweeted over 69,000 times was as much evidence of Modi’s popularity among an electorate of about 800 million as it was of his campaign’s use of social media to reach voters, 150 million of whom were casting a ballot for the first time. The Congress party, by contrast, didn’t embrace such platforms, with the campaign chief Rahul Gandhi, who doesn’t have a Twitter account, making his concession in a 30-second speech at party headquarters in New Delhi.

David Fuller's view

This has been accurately described as the world’s biggest election. Modi’s campaign was also the most sophisticated ever, not least for his use of a three dimensional, life-sized hologram, which enabled people all over India to see and hear him as if he was standing right before them.

Everyone has underestimated Modi.  That has been a mistake and I think India could easily be one of the world’s best performing stock markets over the next 4 to 5 years.  It will also be volatile so my preferred tactic is to buy on setbacks towards the rising 200-day moving average.

See also this item: India Gets New Stock Leaders as Banks Top Cigarettes on Modi.