{"id":199,"date":"2019-06-06T04:36:26","date_gmt":"2019-06-06T04:36:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/?post_type=article&#038;p=199"},"modified":"2019-06-06T04:36:26","modified_gmt":"2019-06-06T04:36:26","slug":"understanding-the-2019-indian-elections","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/article\/understanding-the-2019-indian-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding the 2019 Indian Elections"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><strong>In the last of a five-part series on opinion polls about the Indian elections, national security has overtaken the economy to become the main electoral issue, but things may change by the time the&#8230;<\/strong><\/h2>\r\nThe CVoter Tracker, an opinion survey of voters, found that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s popularity dipped after his first year in office. A significant 63% of those surveyed found his government to be anti-poor and anti-farmer. As Modi completes five years in office, his popularity is touching an all-time high despite repeated stories about India\u2019s economic woes.\r\n\r\nIn April 2014, when the coalition led by the Indian National Congress was in power, the top two issues people cared about were corruption and inflation. Six months after Modi won the 2014 elections, unemployment emerged as the most important issue for Indian voters. Till January 2019, this remained the case. Yet voters seem to be less concerned about it right now. What happened?\r\n\r\nThe explanation is best delivered through an analogy. Imagine you are suffering from many ailments and many parts of your body are aching terribly. You go to a doctor and list down all the problems: headache, stomachache, backache, knee pain, twisted ankle, spondylitis, tennis elbow and a few more aches. But before the doctor begins treating you for all symptoms, you ask him to do something about your backache because you claim it\u2019s killing you. When you go to meet the doctor next, you request relief for knee pain, and the next time you beg relief from spondylitis. All this time, you are suffering from a chronic migraine that refuses to go away, but other pains push it into the background. That is precisely what has happened to the Indian voter\u2019s chronic unemployment problem.\r\n\r\nThe answer may lie in public perception. Almost 42% of the people who mentioned unemployment as a problem felt that Modi\u2019s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would solve the problem. In contrast, only 13% believed that the Congress party would be able to do so. Also, 53% of the people surveyed believe that their quality of life would improve in the next 12 months. Only 17% were pessimistic and believed otherwise. This high index of optimism is working in favor of Modi and the BJP.\r\n\r\n<strong>THE PULWAMA EFFECT AND POPULIST SOPS<\/strong>\r\n\r\nThe most important factor in the ongoing election might turn out to be the attack on Indian troops in Pulwama. It is an emotive issue that resulted in a national outpouring of grief. Modi\u2019s bold airstrikes won popular acclaim and boosted his popularity. Mainstream media oxygenated the entire episode. As a result, people seem to be willing to forgive Modi\u2019s policy failures as honest mistakes of a risk-taking, dynamic prime minister.\r\n\r\nIn the past, security has not played much of a role in Indian elections. Manmohan Singh was re-elected as prime minister despite the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Terror strikes and security issues have, for the most part, remained a non-issue in CVoter Tracker data. Before the Pulwama attacks, the recall rate of these issues was a mere 3%. This has risen to a high of 26%. It seems India might be changing. For the first time, security issues are competing with bread and butter ones in India\u2019s post-independence history.\r\n\r\nAt the start of 2019, 37% of the people surveyed believed their living standards had improved over 12 months, while 31% felt they had declined. The BJP had lost elections in three states in the Hindi heartland: Madya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Rajasthan. There was real fear that Modi would lose like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the BJP prime minister from 1999 to 2004. The specter of 2004 was haunting the party 15 years after it unexpectedly lost the election.\r\n\r\nModi is an arch pragmatist and decided to go on a populist spree. He gave reservation to economically backward upper-caste families, a measure designed to retain the traditional vote base of his party. Money for farmers, targeted cash transfers to the poor and a budget full of goodies for different sections of society soothed frayed nerves of voters.\r\n\r\nBy March 7, 2019, 45% people reported improved living standards and only 22% said these standards had declined. On the same date, 51% respondents said they were very satisfied with the working of the Modi government in contrast to 36% on January 1. The combination of populist benefits for voters and patriotism post-Pulwama boosted the fortunes of Modi. In fact, his personal popularity ratings doubled between January 1 and March 7. People repeatedly contrasted Modi\u2019s bold action to Singh\u2019s lukewarm response to the Mumbai attacks more than 10 years ago. The fact that Modi is the first Indian prime minister to attack Pakistan in its own territory, on its own sovereign soil, since Indira Gandhi has worked strongly in his favor.\r\n\r\n<strong>RAHUL GANDHI, MODI\u2019S BEST FRIEND<\/strong>\r\n\r\nAt the start of 2019, Rahul Gandhi\u2019s stock seemed to be rising. This fifth-generation heir of the Nehru family had gone around the world to elite universities such as Berkeley and the London School of Economics. His party, the Indian National Congress, had won three state elections in the Hindi heartland. Hearteningly, his approval rating was 23% on January 1. Recently, his approval rating has plummeted to 8%.\r\n\r\nJust as Pulwama worked in Modi\u2019s favor, it has worked against Gandhi. Indians no longer trust the Congress party on national security. Most Indians believe that the party has been soft on Pakistan since 2004. Its inability to guarantee security during its time in power and its perceived softness on terror has come back to haunt Congress in 2019.\r\n\r\nThe BJP has been very clever in its electoral strategy. It has portrayed the 2019 election as a binary choice between Modi and Gandhi. This bipolar choice has resulted in people favoring the 56-inch chested Modi to the weak, inarticulate and ineffectual Gandhi. It has led many pundits to remark that Gandhi is Modi\u2019s best friend. And there is more than an element of truth in that comment.\r\n\r\n<strong>BANANA PEELS STILL REMAIN<\/strong>\r\n\r\nIn India, anti-incumbency factor has been running strong in elections for the last two decades. Politicians are rarely able to meet people\u2019s expectations. So, people vote in the opposition to punish the government. The Modi government is not exempt to this powerful phenomenon. On January 1, 27% wanted to vote it out. By March 7, this number had dropped to 20%, a still significant figure.\r\n\r\nEven as the anti-incumbency number has dropped for the government, the number of undecided voters has risen from 42% to 47%. This is evidence of a polity in flux. These voters could swing either way by the time they enter the polls. This is the most worrisome fact for the BJP. If these voters started blaming Modi for their economic woes, then he too could end up with the same fate as Vajpayee.\r\n\r\nIn 2014, people voted for a non-Nehruvian management of the economy. They wanted less control by the Indian state, which had spectacularly mismanaged the economy. However, demonetization as well as imposition of the goods and sales tax increased the heavy hand of the state. In fact, many have come to believe that Modi is obsessed with increasing tax revenue to exclusion of everything else. This has strengthened the inspector-raj infamously created by Congress.\r\n\r\nIn fact, the BJP has made no structural or institutional break from the past. It is just seen as a cleaner and more efficient version of the Indian National Congress. Prime Minister Modi offered no new ideas about governance or the economy. For the last five years, the government has launched one scheme after another and initiated many welfare measures, but the sentiment on the street is negative. Consumption has fallen, investment remains low and controversy rages around unemployment figures. Economic woes might still cause the undecided voter to flip into an anti-incumbent one.\r\n\r\nIn 2014, the BJP ran as an opposition party enjoying the anti-incumbency factor. Today, it faces an opposition that has come together to unseat it from power. Furthermore, India\u2019s democracy follow the first-past-the-post Westminster model. Victory in 543 distinct seats decides who forms the government, not the winner of a pan-national election. It is well within the realms of possibility that Modi\u2019s BJP might fall short of the magic figure of 272 seats in the Lok Sabha, India\u2019s lower house of parliament.\r\n\r\nA final factor weakening the BJP is not unemployment of the masses, but the unemployability of a large number of its members of parliaments. Many of its MPs are \u201cgood-for-nothing\u201d and have relied on the goodwill for Modi to get elected. More than external injury, the BJP faces the clear and present danger of severe \u201cinternal bleeding\u201d that might damage its chances. Like the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the BJP is a cadre-based party. The communists lost power and relevance once their cadres rotted and lost touch with the people. The BJP faces a similar risk as its cadre and elected representatives seem to be following the communist path.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the last of a five-part series on opinion polls about the Indian elections, national security has overtaken the economy to become the main electoral issue, but things may change by the time the&#8230; The CVoter Tracker, an opinion survey&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"issuem_issue":[7],"class_list":["post-199","article","type-article","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","issuem_issue-march-2019","entry","no-media"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Understanding the 2019 Indian Elections - Lok Samvad<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/article\/understanding-the-2019-indian-elections\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Understanding the 2019 Indian Elections - Lok Samvad\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the last of a five-part series on opinion polls about the Indian elections, national security has overtaken the economy to become the main electoral issue, but things may change by the time the&#8230; 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