Can exit polls really cover Indian voters' political cleavages?

Come 6pm India time today (4.30pm UAE time), the analysis will start trickling in.

Polling in the seventh and final phase of general elections in India will be over by the end of the day today, by which time fates of over 8,000 candidates contesting the 543 parliamentary constituencies will be sealed - literally as well as figuratively. But as curtains come down on India's quinquennial dance of democracy, the next few days will see the media - especially India's tireless 24x7 television news channels - indulging in an interesting but largely unproductive exercise of endlessly debating the exit polls as agency after agency puts forward its version of 'who will be the next Indian PM'.
Interesting because, owing to the sheer number of unsolicited permutations and combinations that will split and slice the outcome eight ways to Sunday, at least some will get it right. And unproductive because, you know, we'll know it either way by Friday. Come 6pm India time today (4.30pm UAE time), the analysis will start trickling in. Over the forthcoming 100 or so hours, commentators old and new will grace the numerous panel discussions on the idiot box, treating the audience to mothballed phrases and sentences that are ceremonially brought out of their hibernation every five years. These political scientists will not tire telling us how Incumbent A is countering 'the anti-incumbency factor' to retain her/his seat or why the possibility of a 'hung parliament' is indicative of potential 'horse trading'. Or how the 'swing vote' of the 'silent majority' this year will pave the way for 'bipartisan politics' and so on.
Make no mistake, though. Psephology or the statistical study of elections and voting trends - scoffed at by its critics as a pseudoscience - is an extremely difficult exercise in a country as vast and diverse as India. As KT's team of journalists covering the Indian elections from the ground in multiple states over the past six weeks can affirm, the dialect and style of living changes every 100 or so kilometres in the country. Now add the diversity of religion, ethnic groups, and caste, the contrast in rural and urban ambitions and wants, the conflicting priorities of the rich and the poor, the salaried class and the businesspersons, men and women, the varied aspirations of the youth and the experienced, and divergent awareness levels and vacillating opinions of the 900-million-strong electorate. and you'll get an idea of how excruciatingly challenging and arduously ambitious this exercise is.
And that is the underlying premise of the argument: Based as it is on a representative data sample, are exit polls too superficial to capture the mood of the vast and non-conforming India? In political science, cleavage is defined as the division of the electorate into voting blocs, compartmentalising voters into advocates or adversaries on certain issues, or voting for a certain party. At its simplest, it is complicated to gauge the mood of the people on certain issues through a dip-stick or representative study due to political cleavages. But when the domain is as complex as India - a multi-coloured and multi-cultural society with disparate dreams and divergent aspirations - the exercise is fraught with risks and those who predict do so at the peril of their reputations. Even with new-tech tools of big data analysis at hand, can the changing contours of exit polls really cover Indian voters' political cleavages? May 24 will tell.