In

Amit Mitra, a prominent Indian business leader, put it best. “We were very worried that we were going to get a kedgeree,” he said, expressing widespread concern that India's election would produce an inchoate mishmash of politicians and ideologies. Instead, the country's regionally and caste-divided electorate has somehow combined to cook up an altogether better-planned menu – a Congress-led thali.

Having spent the past five weeks telling us that the result would be determined by local or factional issues, commentators are scrambling to impose a national narrative on the individual votes of 420m Indians. The electorate, we are now told, has collectively opted for modernism, stability, growth and governance. Thank goodness that votes for backwardness, instability, stagnation and corruption were unsuccessful.