GVL Narasimha Rao
India is among the world’s youngest nations with a median age of 24 years. Young adults in the 18-30 age group constitute nearly 40% of our voting population and their number is on the rise.
Young Indians seem to be the happiest lot in the world, gung-ho about their future and career prospects and believe that they will earn much more than their parents. This robust optimism and confidence also reflects in young Indians emerging as a decisive factor in elections and contributing to many electoral upsets in 2007.
Young Indians believe performance, personal integrity and strong leadership are desirable personal attributes for politicians. Corrupt politicians are a strict no-no. They detest sloth and chicanery; attributes which have become synonymous with politics today. Thanks to their awareness, young Indians aspire for fast-paced development and a world-class infrastructure. The success of Narendra Modi in Gujarat, for instance, is partly a result of his youth followers, who saw Modi as a strong, honest and uncompromising leader who is focused on clean governance. These young people are fiercely patriotic and also rooted in traditional family values. They have a strong emotional quotient. Issues of pride and nationalism appeal to them much more strongly than they did for older Indians.
Young voters have strong views on many subjects. They abhor caste- and community-based reservations and communal appeasement, detest dynastic succession in politics and won’t accept a foreign-born as India’s prime minister. This is going to be increasingly bad news for the Congress, as it is associated with all these—negative—qualities.
Young voters are also turning out to be less loyal in their voting patterns, compared with older voters. They back parties and leaders who deliver results and possess desirable qualities. They are willing to break traditional caste and community barriers to vote for candidates, leaders and parties who possess these attributes. As a result, young Indians have emerged as floaters—a major swing group in various elections.
Volatility in Indian elections has increased ever since the voting age had been reduced to 18 years by the Rajiv Gandhi government in 1988. The decision, however, proved costly for the Congress, as the party’s decline in national politics coincided with that decision.
Sonia Gandhi accepted as much when she told an all India Congress committee convention in 1998: “We have slipped perilously in the esteem of the young voter. As the average Indian voter gets younger and more educated, it is our party, which has suffered reverses... We will identify with the aspirations of the new generation and make them feel that we are conscious of their concerns and responsive to their quest for answers.”
The party did make an attempt by fielding many young 20-somethings as members of Parliament. But, the party failed in capitalizing on this initiative by denying them a suitable role in both political and governance structures, to head-off any challenge to Rahul Gandhi’s future leadership. Rahul Gandhi’s induction as a party general secretary and chief campaigner failed to connect with the masses, who came and saw but didn’t vote for him.
Significantly, young Indians are also willing to place a premium on wisdom and experience. That is what the Bharatiya Janata Party is betting on as well in what would otherwise be a rather incongruous of naming the rather old L.K. Advani as their prime ministerial candidate.
If elections in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat have delivered unexpectedly favourable verdicts for parties and politicians who have promised or delivered better governance, it is also a signal from an emerging youth voter. Political parties can ignore this signal at their peril.
Mint columnist G.V.L. Narasimha Rao, whose Monday column, The Bottom Line, accurately predicted Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat results, is a political analyst and managing director of Development and Research Services, a research and consulting firm.