Opinion
Trying to predict what the Indian voter will choose: A weathervane job?
Summary
- India’s anti-defection law made elections about picking political parties more than individual candidates, which in turn has meant which way the electoral ‘hawa’ or wind blows can make a significant difference to outcomes.
The recent Lokniti pre-poll voter survey was played up in press reports for the wrong reasons. Voters’ party preferences got headlines, but pre-poll findings on party shares are always suspect because voters may not have finally chosen, or might not reveal their true choice even if they have.
What the survey yielded of value was issues of concern to voters. It provided a pointer to contesting parties about what to focus on in their campaigns. Employment and inflation are the two issues of topmost concern. Climate change has not entered the popular conversation, even though this is not some dour bell tolling death in the distance, but a more urgent and ever-present threat of disruption of everyday life through extreme climate events.
In every survey, the wording in which responses are phrased matters. Employment could be ‘rozgaari,’ a term derived from the single-day duration of hiring in the agricultural context. Educated respondents might use the term ‘naukri,’ for the longer-duration contracts being sought. Ultimately, neither rozgaari nor naukri quite captures what the respondent is looking for, which is livelihood (jeevika). Parties have to outline what they will do to restore widespread access to livelihoods.
I am compelled to sound yet again the stroke-of-the-pen reform I have consistently advanced as the way out. Small enterprises have been the traditional route through which labour-force entrants have found livelihood and life, and this has been closed off by restricting permission to use the Reverse Charge Mechanism (RCM) in GST, even though it was (and remains) generally permissible under the GST law. Universal permission for the RCM (capped to prevent misuse) will restore much needed legitimacy to manufacturing and service enterprises below the GST registration threshold.
The Lokniti survey report is unfortunately not accessible. From press reports, responses are subclassified by religion and caste, but not for the key demographic—the new voter aged 18 to 22 (too young to have registered in 2019). The Election Commission reports “over 2 crore" (20 million) newly registered voters in the larger age group of 18-29, out of a total electorate size of 969 million. That is too small to affect the overall outcome, but it would have been useful to have their responses separately from those of repeat voters.
Starting from what concerns them, voters map onto whichever party (or, rarely, individual candidate) can best address the issue/s of relevance to them. The pre-poll survey should have asked if voters had chosen, without asking them to reveal their choice. That would have yielded a truthful answer, and from that, the residual fraction of undecided voters open to campaign persuasion.
The electronic voting machine (EVM) is the critical intermediary entrusted with the task of reflecting voters’ final choices in the results. The formidable logistical issues involved in the deployment of EVMs and booth manpower, along with adequate supplies of indelible ink, are handled by the Election Commission. Some electronic experts like Madhav Deshpande have spoken of how the EVM process in place is susceptible to tampering. But PRS Legislative Research has issued a series of six short videos to demonstrate that the EVM process is robustly protected. The debate will probably never be fully resolved.
Members elected this year to Parliament with a party affiliation, as in all national elections over the last 40 years, will be tied to their party line on all issues put to a parliamentary vote. The Anti-Defection Law (the 52nd amendment to the Constitution in 1985), mandated that a member of Parliament or a state legislature can be disqualified from membership if he or she “votes or abstains from any crucial voting contrary to the directive circulated by his/her respective political party." This has made the numbers garnered by any party, singly or in coalition, the only election outcome that really matters, in terms of the laws that will be passed by the new Lok Sabha. The smooth passage of that Constitutional amendment was itself facilitated by the huge parliamentary majority of the then ruling party.
In this situation, do the attributes of individual candidates matter at all? The candidate’s caste has always mattered, enough for parties to factor caste into their choice of candidates. PRS Legislative Research has made information publicly available on parliamentary attendance and the performance of contestants who have been members before. However, local involvement and accessibility might matter much more. Incumbent candidates seeking another term are likely to have gained traction if they have successfully interceded with the relevant state and local authorities to secure benefits for their constituency. Empirical work by Tariq Thachil and Adam Auerbach shows that the emergence of political leadership in urban informal settlements is critically a function of the ability to deliver local benefits like water and sanitation through that kind of intercession.
The fact remains, though, that the Anti-Defection Law has swung the focus of elections decisively away from individual candidates to parties. This, in turn, has made the voter’s choice of party subject to the electoral equivalent of meteorological predictions. If there is a hawa (a wave) in some direction, should they go with it even if they might otherwise have chosen differently?
