Why Election 2014 is different

 

New Delhi: Less than a week from now, Indians will embark on the process of electing the 16th Lok Sabha. 

 

This election is as much about voting in a new government as it is about defining the political opposition.

There are several issues driving the narrative in the election, including anger against the incumbent Congress-led United Progressive Alliance for corruption and mismanagement of the economy. 

 

But the election is also about electing a government that can fulfil the aspirations of an overwhelmingly young India; 52% of the voters are in the age group of 18-40 years. 

 

This general election, which will, in all likelihood, see the first prime minister born after independence taking office, will see 814 million people casting their votes using 1.7 million electronic voting machines, across 930,000 polling stations to elect 543 representatives. Around 120 million of these voters will be exercising their franchise for the first time.

 

If opinion polls are to be believed, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition, inspired by its prime ministerial aspirant Narendra Modi, 63, is likely to emerge as the largest political formation. The battle will be won and lost for the BJP in North India, a region which accounts for the bulk of the party’s footprint. And within this the battle will narrow down to Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which together send 120 representatives to the Lok Sabha. 

 

If, as expected, the BJP is part of the ruling coalition, who will be the opposition?

In normal course, the outgoing Congress would be expected to inherit this space, but that is no longer a certainty. 

 

A clutch of regional parties could end up with more representatives than the Congress, even though it is unlikely they will form a united opposition front. 

 

Delhi’s 49-day wonder, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), could end up playing either kingmaker or a vocal opposition (in spirit, if not in flesh, because it is unlikely to have the numbers). 

 

The Congress, in opposition, has traditionally been subdued. The BJP may have been disruptive over the past decade, but it had been a better opposition. 

 

AAP, whose success in Delhi was enabled by the fundamental transformation of Indian society and economy—it is unlikely that the AAP experiment would have succeeded to such an extent if it had played out 10 years back—may end up being an insignificant player in Parliament in terms of numbers, but in some ways, its story is the story of the coming election. 

 

The party has shunned the traditional politics of identity and embraced instead the aspirations of the people, especially those at the bottom of the pyramid, by defining corruption as the impediment to the realization of their dreams. It has struck a chord with some voters because never before have public aspirations mattered so much—cutting across demographics, classes and ethnicities.

 

Modi’s message, while replete with the expected political rhetoric and platitudes, seeks to address those very aspirations. 

 

Census 2011 showed us how the country has traded up in the first decade of the new millennium. People who were walking to work are now cycling to work; those who were cycling now ride a two-wheeler, and those with two-wheelers have upgraded to cars (at least, some of them have). 

 

And over the past decade, UPA’s massive entitlements regime has lifted 150 million people out of poverty—or added them to the country’s burgeoning middle class—driving, in turn, the rapidly growing consumer economy. Not surprisingly, the country’s consumption habits have undergone a structural transformation. For the first time, and not just in urban India, half or more of the household consumption of the average Indian family are non-food items. Indeed, rural consumption behaviour is now mimicking the urban. 

 

The stark distinction between rural and urban India has all but ceased with the emergence of census towns—essentially rural areas that mimic urban behaviour and political preferences. The 2011 Census revealed that the growth in the number of towns in the last decade spurted by over 50%. 

 

As a result, India has around 150 urban constituencies, if we use this wider definition—a significant number. A third of the population of the country lives in urban areas if census towns are taken into account. As a result, rural India alone does not hold the key to the electoral outcome. 

 

It is only natural, then, that the farm-sector now employs less than half of the working population.

Given all this, it is obvious that then the hot-button issues will be jobs, inflation, corruption and anti-incumbency. Not surprisingly this leaves the Congress on the defensive. 

 

Through its second stint, UPA has been besieged by corruption scandals. A distracted government found little time or inclination to push much-desired policy change—to give an example, the much-needed closure on tax reforms with respect to the single goods and services tax and the direct taxes code is now at least two years behind schedule.

 

The Indian economy created 15 million jobs in the past 10 years, even though 12 million people join the labour force every year. Leave alone clearing the backlog, even annual additions to the labour force have little or no chance of being absorbed.

 

Inflation, especially of food articles, has stubbornly hovered in double digits. The economy has slowed—from a growth rate of 9% plus in the late 2000s to 5% or less in 2013-14. 

 

RANJAY KUMAR,

PGDM 2nd SEM,

SOURCE-:MINT