The announcement of 10 per cent reservation for the economically backward among the upper castes heralds the beginning of the 2019 poll season. It’s also an exciting season of watching how top political players will communicate with their voters.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to have got off to an early start with Monday’s announcement. But what is Modi trying to say? It’s not that hard to figure out if you look at the reservation announcement as a gesture of reassurance after what—for the Bharatiya Janata Party—must have been shock defeats in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. Modi seems to have read the election results as a breakdown of communication between him and his voters and has set about repairing the relationship in earnest.

What does he do? He decides to woo them back, take them into his embrace and reassure them that all is well. These are tropes we understand well from our immersion in popular cinema. The give and take of rootna aur manana, as they say,  must be played out fully. It is that season. No turning down the volume. Behold Narendra Modi back on his knees cajoling the electorate to give him another go.

There is a kind of subterranean language that politicians employ when they are in peak poll mode. They are not selling their policies as much as themselves to the people. Narendra Modi is the master of this mode of communication. There are those who need this assurance, Modi feels. They need to be reminded that the man they chose as PM is still gold. Those are the people he is speaking with in this round.

Modi knows well that if you give people a dream, as he did in 2014, you have to keep reimagining it for them. He does it by invoking caste and poverty together. It’s as though only the guarantee of reservations will lift the upper caste poor out of dire economic straits.

But didn’t Modi have five whole years and a rock-solid majority in the Lok Sabha to do what he must without resorting to election-eve sops? He seems to have decided that the best way to bypass these difficult questions is to invoke the idea that their caste identity needs to be supported. Just like supporting the Hindu identity was shorthand for ensuring all-around wellbeing in a string of elections beginning from Uttar Pradesh in early 2018 to Madhya Pradesh in late 2019.

Which brings us to Rahul Gandhi. The Congress president has been mimicking a version of Modi, essaying the janeu dhari Brahmin and playing the Hindu-at-heart liberal. But now that the general elections are upon us, will the electorate pay money to watch a Modi-double when the real thing is playing out on another screen? It’s a question worth thinking about, not least because not all of those who were starry-eyed about Modi in 2014 feel as warmly about him in 2019.

What are the choices before them? Which voice will they choose to respond to? It’s a question that the Congress and Gandhi will have to consider carefully before deciding what to say in the long season of political signalling that awaits us.