BackCongress’ own goal
The large swing that opinion polls predict in favour of the BJP has largely been a creation of the Congress
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The last two weeks have seen plenty of action in Indian political parties. As the elections draw near, politicians are furtively making the switch from one party to the other to ensure their survival.
In the Congress, many senior leaders have shied away from the coming contest or have been forced to stand up and fight. The party has found it hard to find allies and many potential ones—such as the Telangana Rashtra Samithi—have shied away. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is doing better on this front but is facing its own troubles: L.K. Advani’s continuing rebellion, the virtual walkout by Jaswant Singh after he was denied a party ticket and other dissonant voices are for everyone to hear. Election season noises are not unusual but this time something different is afoot.
One strong criticism of parliamentarism—usually vented by the Left—is that bourgeois democracies do not offer any real choice to citizens.
To use the terminology of industrial organization economics, parties make different noises only for the purposes of product differentiation while the stuff they offer remains the same. And they largely do that. If the “quality" of one party—its economic performance in power and governance acumen—declines, the citizen shifts his vote to the other party which seems to offer a better choice. But in oligopolistic competition between different parties—especially when two parties or coalitions contend for power at the centre—it makes great sense for parties to offer the same platform. The choice is in effect illusory.
The last twenty years of India’s political history can largely be seen as a desultory swing between these two options that did not differ markedly.
The BJP interlude from 1999 to 2004 can be considered a mildly different product. The Atal Bihari Vajpayee government did try its hand at product differentiation. While seeking power, it banked on mobilization around Hindutva. In power, it detonated a nuclear device. But beyond these unusual measures, it stuck to the time tested pattern of government in India. Subsidies continued to flow; the political flavour—notwithstanding its claims—remained by and large centrist.
In spite of its relatively better economic performance, it fell in the predictable two-product pattern. It lost power in 2004.
This time, opinion polls predict a large—nearly 10 percentage point—swing in favour of the BJP. If that happens, it will be a break from the pattern seen from 1996 to 2009 when vote swings—ranging from less than a percentage point in 1998 to a massive 9.75 percentage points in 2009—have favoured the Congress. What explains this predicted shift?
A large swing, given previous trends, is only possible if the policy platforms of the two parties diverge greatly. One way this can take place is by the party vying for power to dramatically alter its stand on a large number of issues. This is rare because of the largely even spread of choices among citizens. Any big swing is likely to alienate a significant chunk of the electorate.
The other way is for the ruling party to let its performance deteriorate to such an extent that the gap between the two increases dramatically. While the BJP has made a lot of noise on putting the Indian economy back on the rails it has not spelled out its position on economic issues in any detail. It cannot be argued that it is offering something different. On other issues where it can present a different choice—secularism and foreign policy to cite two examples—its position is well-known. All in all, the policy gap between it and the Congress is not the BJP’s creation.
The explanation lies with the Congress. Over the past ten years, the party has led India to economic gloom. This has come at a time when India is experiencing a large swelling in the ranks of its working age population. At both ends of this population spectrum—those entering the job market and those who have spent some years in good jobs—there is fear: one set feels it will not be able to find jobs while the other group has been losing jobs.
On the economic plane, the Congress has by default created a policy gap between itself and the BJP and in favour of the latter.
This kind of politico-economic mismanagement is perhaps unique in India’s recent history. There have, no doubt, been previous instances of such poor performance. But none have been seen in combination with a growing working age population and after inheriting a vibrant economy.
This column has on previous occasions argued that the Congress was trying hard to engineer a win for itself in 2014 by systematically “rigging" the policy space. As argued above, any large deviation in policies threatens to alienate voters, especially if voter preferences are evenly spread. Its economic policy miscalculations are too obvious to the electorate now.
Siddharth Singh is Editor (Views) at Mint. Reluctant Duelist will take stock of matters economic, political and strategic—in India and elsewhere—every fortnight.
Comments are welcome at siddharth.s@livemint.com. To read Siddharth Singh’s previous columns, go to www.livemint.com/reluctantduelist-
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