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India is on the threshold of another “million mutinies”, to use VS Naipaul's evocative phrase. The ongoing agitations by ex-servicemen over OROP (one rank, one pension) and the Patidars of Gujarat for job reservations, and the oncoming public sector strike are symptoms of this mutinous on-rush. Further ahead, there is every chance that the rural distress over unviable small-time farming may also come to a boil, even though the contentious Land Bill has been defanged and possibly sent into cold storage.

Narendra Modi baiters may derive vicarious pleasure from the fact that his government is facing the music, but the reason why this seems so is that his rivals have adroitly used the seething discontent to direct it towards the Modi government. Given Modi's high profile and big promises made before May 2014, they may even be succeeding in deflecting public anger against themselves towards Modi. However, it is more than likely that the revolt brewing in many parts of India are against an inept political system and the complete lack of credible leadership in all parties.

It is best to read the current public discontent as a continuation of the citizen mutinies that began around 2010-11 with the Anna movement, the overthrow of the Left Front in West Bengal and the DMK in Tamil Nadu, and the gathering storm that peaked in 2014-15, resulting in the rise of two politicians - Narendra Modi at the centre, and Arvind Kejriwal in Delhi.

The tragedy is that both leaders - Modi and Kejriwal - and their rivals are misreading their mandates. Both of them are viewing their respective victories in May 2014 and February 2015 as massive personal votes of confidence, when that may be true in only a limited way. Their mandates are a personal endorsement only to the limited extent that they personified the promise of change and bring credibility back to the political process. It was never a blank cheque for either of them.

Political pundits are fond of saying that the old Indian anti-incumbency syndrome – where voters kept defeating incumbent governments every five years – had changed in the 2000s once a few politicians started delivering some degree of governance and development. But this may again be about to change, for the aspirations of the newer generations are no longer about obtaining rudimentary public goods like roads and power, but something more – education, health, jobs, and higher incomes. It is not that the public has suddenly become more demanding of government largesse when the latter can’t simply afford to please everybody; rather, the public seems to be making unreasonable demands on the state precisely because it can no longer believe what politicians promise and what they deliver.

It is also worth recalling that most mandates tend to get misinterpreted in India’s first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system where small vote swings result in large gains in seat shares. In UP, for instance, the Samajwadi Party got a roaring majority in 2012 on a vote share of less than 30 percent. The AIADMK won an overwhelming majority in 2001 with less than 32 percent of the vote – the vast majority still voted against it; it lost badly in 2006 even with a 1 percent rise in its vote share. The 2011 mandate, where it won 150 seats on a 38 percent vote, was 6 percent below its best-ever performance in 1991. When Mamata Banerjee sent the Left Front packing in West Bengal in 2011, the Left’s vote share was a massive 41 percent – hardly a big mandate for change (“poribortan”).

So, to interpret Indian election results as massive mandates in favour of one party or the other is always a mistake. All mandates are conditional on leaders delivering credible performance quickly.

That neither Modi nor Kejriwal has done so is why we are seeing the eruption of new forms of discontent in many places. Modi has not changed the way government and central government do business, and Kejriwal has reduced his party to a one-man show, and has now fallen back on traditional vote-bank rhetoric to avoid having to take responsibility for his own failures.

The real reason why Modi and Kejriwal got hugely unexpected majorities was because of the FPTP electoral system, and also become a critical mass of swing voters saw genuine possibilities of change in their leadership. But neither has so far lived up to expectations.

The people expect a new form of political communication that is direct and truthful and believable, but that has not quite happened. It is not that the people expected everything to improve from Day One, but they did expect to be told what was happening and why some improvements may take time. But neither Modi nor Kejriwal has done this.

Take the case of OROP. Let us also, for argument's sake, assume that the costs of implementing OROP are so high as to completely mess up the central exchequer. Any credible government will then have to lay out the facts and figures honestly so that people can see for themselves why OROP may need compromises or delayed implementation. But we are actually getting mixed messages: that government is claiming full commitment to it but also adding a phrase that the issue is complex. This is equal to telling the people that they are too stupid to understand the issues. If politicians cannot explain complexities in language everyone can understand, they will lose credibility.

Now take the case of Kejriwal. He has done nothing beyond what a Sheila Dikshit or a BJP Chief Minister would have done, by making higher provisions for power and water subsidies and higher allocations for education. He has forgotten all about his Lokpal bill, and has, in fact, focused all his rhetoric on fighting with the Lt Governor when he could have spent the time more usefully delivering on his mandate. He must think the voters of Delhi are stupid enough to buy his rhetoric when he is busy schmoozing with Nitish Kumar in Bihar as though what happens in that state is more important to his politics in Delhi than what he does with the power he does have. Sheila Dikshit was seen as a good CM most of the time because she delivered within the power constraints. But Kejriwal is busy trying to shift the blame. His high-profile fallout with Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan surely has not gone unnoticed by voters. Kejriwal is clearly trying to target Modi and the centre in order to deflect public anger away from his own performance to another target.

If Modi is currently at the receiving end of criticism from all political parties, it constitutes further confirmation of a coming shift in the public mood away from traditional politics. Modi's political rivals (Rahul Gandhi, Nitish Kumar, Arvind Kejriwal) know the ground is shifting under them; they are pointing fingers in his direction because they sense that the groundswell will consume them if they do not deflect the blame elsewhere. They are choosing the easier option of blaming someone else instead of becoming credible themselves. Nothing exemplifies this more than Rahul Gandhi's sudden love and empty rhetoric in favour of any and every cause - from OROP to civilian casualties to the land bill to the real estate bill.

The chances are the real causes of discontent are different from the stated ones of India's current mutineers. The Patidar demand for reservations in jobs and a change in their status to OBCs is actually an indirect acknowledgement of the failure of affirmative action policies and the need for finding better solutions. The OROP agitation is less about grabbing unfair benefits for ex-servicemen and more about frustration with politicians who promise something and then backtrack when faced with fiscal realities and competing demands from other segments of babudom. The agitation against the land bill is less about fears of land confiscation and more about unviable agriculture and the lack of exit opportunities from it without being shortchanged by politicians on land prices.

Modi and Kejriwal will fail if they interpret their mandates as being about delivering freebies and not about creating a new politics that people can understand and believe in. India will pay a high price for their respective failures to understand their mandates. The mandate is for more honest politics, not more unbelievable promises.

There is, of course, time to change. For starters, Modi needs to take the message of what he intends to do directly to the public. He has to reset expectations honestly. If he cannot deliver on some rash promises made on the campaign trail, he should admit it and apologise for it instead of keeping silent and pretending people will forget. Modi’s mandate is about change, and the first change needed is in the way politicians explain their policies – both success and failures - to the public. He does not have to pretend business is unimportant in his scheme of things, or attempt to play Robin Hood by promising to bring all the black money back home asap. The public knows the difference between rhetoric and deliver; it will not hold him to his promises if he levels with them even now.

Kejriwal’s mandate is about delivering honest politics, not constant battles with the central government. His post-February politics have been dishonest and unnecessarily anti-centre. He won’t be forgiven by the voters of Delhi if he continues along this path and fails to deliver.

The Indian public is all-forgiving when faced given the real truth and when politicians appear genuinely apologetic about their errors. Ask Kejriwal, He apologised for his political errors of 2014, and got a massive endorsement in February 2015. It is another matter that he is again misinterpreting his mandate – but that is another story.