Agenda Elections 2019: Chowkidar vs Berozgar - Catalysing the Raging Indian Youth for a mature Democracy

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Home to over 133 crores of people (~18% of world population), and nearly 90 crores of which are eligible for universal suffrage, makes India indeed world’s largest democracy. An active proportion of this “90 crores” will participate in yet another dance of democracy during the summers of 2019. Republic of India will decide its fate for another 5years by choosing its leaders for the 17^th time after independence. Given to the wide scale of this festival of democracy celebrated every 5-years in the country, it is reasonable to thoroughly comprehend the over arching agenda on which the political parties are trying to woo the vast voters base in the country.

Recap 2014

The last General Elections held in 2014 were indeed a landmark. The 2014 elections witnessed the people venting out their frustration against rampant political class corruption. This anger and frustration got seeded amongst the voters during the 3 preceding years of the elections, at the outset of the Anna Hazare Movement in 2011. The anti incumbency was well mobilised by the opposition, and the 2014 elections were fought on the agenda of ‘Development’ and ‘Against Corruption’, with prime focus on the youth. The narrative set by this agenda for the 2014 elections was strongly communicated through new & modern methods in election campaigning and did successfully mobilised the highest voter turnout till date in India minimizing the gap between men & women turnout.

Decoding 2019 Agenda

Unlike the 2014 elections, General Elections 2019 seem to be agenda-less or just about political parties trying to win elections at large, or revolving around the aspirations of Indian youth. Infact, it seems to mobilise the raging Indian youth by dividing their unfulfilled aspirations into two major categories – “Chowkidars – the loud believers” and “Berozgars – the angry non believers”.

The former is about the section of the youth that believes in making New India and thinks that assertive and loud politics is the need of the hour. They believe the previous political class has deceived them for long and they must be wiped out completely. For this, they strongly support all sorts of paradigm shift in governance & political systems in the country and blindly favour dominance in politics. With this approach, whenever the political class or their hegemonic tendencies is questioned, this section has loudly supported chauvinism and jingoism. A proportion of this section is certainly constructive, and pushed the ruling class for good governance. But this calm and silent proportion, has been ignorant of the political failures. 

The latter is frustrated by the huge backlog of rampant unemployment in the country largely, and then he doesn’t see a breakthrough in identity politics & involvement of criminals in politics in India. Also, they acknowledge that there has been no major downfall in political class corruption, particularly at the decentralised level, and are frustrated by excessive political branding. They do not believe that there is any New India in making as the pseudo democratic values based on identity prevails even now. Adding to this, there is denial for accepting failures & incompetencies, and dubious political marketing to brag any minor achievement or no Govt achievement by the ruling political class.

At large, both the sides we have a considerable size of raging Indian youth, trying to prove each other wrong. With this tussle, there has been rise of hegemonic tendencies and pandemonium over aspirations, apparently. More than focusing on evaluating the performance of the Government facing elections vis-à-vis performance of previous Governments, both the ends are engaged in ridiculing each other. The opposition is failing to offer a valid and sustainable way forward. It fails to appropriately communicate the weakness of the incumbent Government and press them to accept the faults. The fight is more reactive, than being constructive.

It is evident, that on one end, the political class is certainly seeking power, the people on the other end fail to pressurize them to offer a constructive and sustainable electoral debacle in larger public interest.

Baseline – Politics of Performance

Now, the question arises that in such a scenario what should be the agenda for elections, what are the points to ponder. For the Indian democracy to be more mature, opting for ‘politics of performance’ over pandemonium is anytime the only viable option, where the actual performance of the Government and its capacity to deliver in future is given more importance. In this case, the incumbent Government has indeed performed well on several fronts in last 5years.

Comparing the economic growth of India in last 5years of NDA2 Government (2014-19) vis-à-vis that during UPA2 (2009-14), the GDP growth rate suffered during the last 2-3years of both the Governments, perhaps, due to the after effects of recession & policy paralysis during UPA 2, and due to demonetisation followed by GST during NDA2 (Elara Capital). However, demonetisation coupled with direct benefit transfer, JAM trinity, resulted in large scale remonetisation – improving the bank penetration, financial inclusion and digital banking in the country. One of the key endeavour of NDA2 was to weed out leakages and middlemen in public delivery of services on several ends. DBT measures, enacting the Black Money Act for undisclosed foreign wealth, adopting e-processes for auction, etc. are some of key initiatives taken up in this context, which could not be implemented by UPA.

The NDA2 laid high focus on infrastructure development to ensure seamless connectivity across the country. Both big ticket projects including Sagarmala for ports, Inland Waterway, Bharatmala (rail-road network), and basic infrastructure projects including Village electrification, Sanitation, Affordable Housing and Rural link roads were focused by NDA2. Most of these projects were components of “Bharat Nirman” and “JNNURM” under UPA regime for 10years, but the focused and accountable framework designed under NDA2 for most of these projects yielded visible success, be it in case village electrification, rural ODF, rural road connectivity. Unlike UPA2, the NDA2 was fortunate in controlling the food inflation. The proactive food management policy of NDA2 considerably brought down the food prices in the country to the lowest levels in a decade.

As mentioned, unlike the policy paralysis in UPA owing to coalition woos and leadership tussle, NDA2 firstly had advantage of dominating representation in the lower house, followed by unchallenged leadership. As a result, NDA2 stood firm in decision making and introducing reforms. However, with this absolute position to take quick decisions without any coalition pressures in Governance, the NDA2 did make few mistakes and missed vital opportunities in larger public interest.

Such as, the low food prices coupled with demonetisation woos added to farmer distress in the country, which was one of the biggest challenge for the incumbent Government. It cannot be denied that NDA2 could not address the farmer distress adequately. Then, inspite of the push given by the Government to boost manufacturing through Make in India, the cash crunch caused by demonetisation struck hard the MSME sector and adversely affected the manufacturing index (PMI) in the country. It has hardly improved from 51.5 in March 2014 to 52.6 in March 2019. With this, a major opportunity in employment generation has indeed been missed.

As reported, the unemployment rate at 6.1% is highest in 45years (NSSO 2017-18) with a huge backlog of unemployed persons and more adding. It must also be noted that unlike the UPA, NDA2 hardly focused on social sectors. Education sector was highly ignored in last 5years. On one side, NDA2 boasts their swiftness in decision making, and on the another, it cannot be overlooked that the Government could not finalise the New Education Policy in 5years.

At last, while evaluating the political class in 2019, the poll inflation introduced in last elections by BJP cannot be ignored. With advent of excessive political branding, media buying and premium campaign models in Indian elections led by BJP, has resulted into dubious marketing and unnecessary expenditure for political advantage. The per-capita expenditure per voter in 2014 was INR 42, as against INR 12 only in 2009, and it is certainly expected to rise further in 2019. It is a recorded fact that NDA2 has spent over INR 5000 Cr between 2014 - 2018 on advertisement & publicity, which was 2-times of what UPA spent in 10 years spending only some INR 2600 Cr.

What do we have?

Now the subsequent question is what does the opposition offers. Presently, we have a scattered opposition, primarily led by Congress. The wide spectrum of leaders, divided in opinion but united only to gain power, cannot promise a stable Government indeed. The sad part of this is they cannot even offer a strong opposition keeping strict vigilance on governance. The scattered opposition with so many leaders representing multiple aspirations in silos can only nurture vote bank politics. Indeed, this includes leaders who have performed exponentially well in their territories. However, it is a fact that they fail to represent the aspirations of the entire country.

It is not that the ruling class doesn’t nurture vote bank politics, but they have opted for a different approach of vote consolidation. This involves serving the divisive lines of vote bank in the country and trying to bring them under one roof, promising differential treatment and class emancipation. The ruling class has time and again ignored, rather protected the hegemonic tussles in this context. They have nurtured chauvinism, hyper nationalism and protected the feudalistic mind set in many instances. 

The most unfortunate part is, that even Congress fails to provide an over arching canvass to represent a strong opposition. The national party that has ruled the country for decades, presently has opted a reactive approach to represent only the aspirations of the segment against the ruling class. Owing to this myopic strategy, it doesn’t even focus to provide a holistic representation to all sections of the society. They seem to have lately recognize this lapse, and are improving their methods of challenging the ruling class, but then they are failing to communicate a strong alternate plan.

Way forward – Towards a mature democracy

Certainly, India needs political stability for focused and consistent planning and governance. But isn’t it time that we as voters, especially the youth, rather falling prey to aspirations of political class – ruling or opposition, becomes more thoughtful and emphasizes a mature democracy – where we pressurize the parties to weed out criminal / vicious candidates, to not give tickets to candidates on identity based winnability factors. Can’t we stand to demand to vote for a suitable and competent candidate in our respective constituencies.

The 70 year old Republic must now focus on strengthening its democratic system. We follow ‘first past the post’ (FPTP) system – where democracy is supposed to begin from home, not be limited to the political parties and their national leaders. Our system provides framework for democracy at roots. However, we have consistently failed to support the cause. We have been voting for political parties and leadership at large than voting for the respective candidates from our constituencies. If at all it happens, it is more based on caste and religion based identity.

The local representatives are rarely held accountable, and that is why we face policy/ scheme implementation failures, unbalanced regional development, etc. The performance based yardstick is more applicable on national leaders and their political parties at large, rather it should be exercised on each and every candidate, irrespective of their political party. The politics of performance must trickle down at lower levels to establish India as a mature democracy.

While we go for voting this 2019 elections, it is important to focus on how are we as voters contribute in weeding out vote bank politics – to let the parties fight fair elections on true agenda of development. They say, leaders are reflection of the society – yes we are the society. The high involvement of youth in politics led by such ignorance of these facts is unfortunate, and leading our constitutional democracy to gallows.  Unless we change ourselves – our voting specifications and patterns - the politics in India shall remain this. The only way forward is to vote for a performance based mature democracy.