Mass participation has slid in democracies across the world but Indian voters have bucked this trend in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections. Is it another clichéd ‘triumph of democracy’ or the last gamble of a disenchanted population?
Yahoo News, 28 April, 2014
Social scientists tell us that no logical individual should ever vote; that the probability of casting a decisive vote in a large election is almost zero (or 1 in 60 million if it’s the US presidential elections). The fact that many still vote made Stanford political scientist Morris Fiorina bemoan in 1989 that “turnout is the paradox that ate rational choice theory”.
Then, as recently as in 2011, we were told that voting should not be considered a duty for many who, in fact, owe it to the rest of us not to vote. In The Ethics of Voting, political scientist Jason Brennan argued that unless citizens put in the hard work to become informed and upright voters, it’s better if they don’t pollute the polls with their spurious votes.
The millions of Mumbai voters who stayed away from polling booths last week might comfort Fiorina. And Brennan’s argument seemed to make sense when candidates such as Medha Patkaraccused their opponents of distributing cash to buy votes, or when I visited Jharkhand’s Latehar where entire hamlets waited till the poll eve for cues from their village heads, who were away striking deals with candidates.
Yet nothing seems to legitimize a democracy more for us than a high voter turnout. Besides making the election process more representative, mass participation endorses claims that the so-called system is working just fine.
So the biggest good news so far from these ongoing Lok Sabha polls is that the first seven phases till April 24 in the 349 constituencies in 24 states and Union Territories have recorded the highest-ever voter turnout in any Lok Sabha polls since 1951. The national aggregate so far is 66 percent against 57.53 percent for the same constituencies in 2009. In terms of numbers, that is 35 crore votes against the 21.49 crore cast five years ago. Counting of postal ballots will only take the tally higher. Reports of lakhs of names missing from electoral rolls only show that we have missed the opportunity to record an even bigger turnout.
This upswing of the Indian voter turnout is truly remarkable in the backdrop of receding interest among voters across the world.
In the US, the turnout for presidential polls slipped from 73 percent in 1900 to 58 percent in 2012. In the UK, participation in parliamentary polls came down from 83 percent in 1951 to 65 percent in 2010. Europe's strongest economy Germany saw 72 percent turnout in 2013, down from 86 percent in 1953. With only 59 percent voting in 2012, even Japan saw a drop of 17 percentage points over six decades since 1952.
Indian voters have been rather consistent in maintaining a moderate 55-64 percent turnout over six decades. Barring the war years of 1962 and 1971, voter turnout for general elections never slipped below the 60 percent mark before 1980. It rode the sympathy wave after Indira Gandhi's assassination to scale an all-time high of 64 percent in 1984. Since then, the only two times the turnout crossed 60 percent were in 1989 and 1998 when voters brought themselves to believe in the political alternatives that VP Singh and AB Vajpayee, respectively, promised. Both times, their optimism went unrewarded as neither Singh nor Vajpayee proved be the promised game-changers and were soon dislodged themselves by voters.
Usually, a swing for or against a candidate or party mobilizes voters in large numbers. In the Assembly polls last year, most states registered record turnouts. If Delhi swung for the AAP, Rajasthan rejected the Congress. Madhya Pradesh and Tripura backed the incumbents en masse.
So do the claims of a ‘Modi wave’ and the obvious anger at the corruption-laden Congress government explain the current spurt in turnout? Is it also a broader endorsement of our political and economic system?
“This is not a manifestation of any sudden swing for any party,” says professor Sanjay Kumar, co-director of Lokniti, a research program of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS). “We have seen high turnout in all Assembly polls in the last few years. The credit goes to the Election Commission that launched its latest voter awareness campaign [SVEEP] in 2010. Cleaning up electoral rolls in urban areas by removing dead, duplicate or absent voters has also helped.”
Kumar also credits political parties and their innovative campaigns for energizing voters. “But the biggest factor is probably the participation of women voters,” he says. In the first five phases till April 12, women registered a higher turnout than men in Chandigarh, Arunachal Pradesh, Lakshadweep, Meghalaya, Goa and Sikkim.
The trend has been consistent since 2010 as women voters overtook men in Assembly polls in states such as Bihar, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Manipur, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram. In a slow but steady progress, women brought down a 16.68 percent gender gap in turnout in 1962 to less than 8 percent in 1998. Another decade and now they have begun to catch up. The bad news, though, is the skewed sex ratio (down from 945 in 1941 to 927 in 1991) and that only 883 women voters were registered per 1000 men voters in 2014.
New voters usually vote, and the new 10 crore in these elections are also contributing to the big turnout. But a large number of youth come of age as first-time voters in every election. The key factor pushing the turnout this time is probably the other first-timer – the woman voter who became eligible earlier but did not vote before 2014. Little wonder then that the poll at the two-thirds stage (349 seats) has already recorded 13.55 crore more votes – higher than the total 10 crore new voters put together – than in 2009.
Sociologist Dipankar Gupta considers the high level of engagement as much a sign of awareness as of dissatisfaction. “Turnout goes up whenever there is a crisis or tension,” he points out. “We are undergoing a period of tension with growing resentment against corruption and concern for the economy. This turnout is seeking change. Ironically, the only change these voters can bring about is that of political leadership and not of policies.”
Plus ça change
Our voter turnout (so far) might have hit an all-time-high of 66 percent, but the larger question remains: why have Indian voter turnouts been consistently limited to only a thin majority of 55-64 percent over the last six decades?
When it comes to policies, our principal political parties have been mirror images of one another. This lack of a real choice and the resultant inability of voters to significantly improve their lot have created a sense of futility among a large section over time.
Of course, there is nothing Indian about this. “This is a global reality. There is not much to choose between the Republicans or the Democrats [in the US] beyond, maybe, a healthcare bill or such. The political alternatives do not really offer policy options. It is the same system that works,” says Gupta.
The global disenchantment with politics-as-usual is finding rakish voices in the popular media. “Why be complicit in this ridiculous illusion?” scoffed British “socialist comedian” Russell Brand in a BBC interview last year. American satirist PJ O’Rourke wrote his 2010 book, Don’t Vote – It Just Encourages The Bastards, from a conservative position very different from Brand’s.
In India, it usually takes Naxalite organizations to call poll boycotts and not many have heeded them this month in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. And yet, at least one-third of our voters usually don’t turn up to vote.
The convenient explanation for limited voter participations is that the affluent city dweller has been too self-absorbed to vote, particularly after liberalization. But only one-third of India’s voters are in urban areas and a large number of them are by no means affluent. Besides, as Gupta points out, the urban voter is often politically more active and rapid urbanization has pushed many erstwhile rural voters to political participation.
Instead, it would appear that millions of Indians in both towns and villages are getting increasingly disillusioned with the efficacy of their franchise. Not all of them are necessarily poor. They have exhausted their options – or watched their elders do so – on political alternatives without achieving any tangible change. Indeed, their participation in polls would have been much lower in the absence of cheap election freebies.
That we are happy to celebrate a two-third turnout takes some shine off the Indian experiment that John Keane, political scientist and author of The Life and Death of Democracy (2009), described as democracy’s “most compound, turbulent and exciting” prototype.
After World War II, democracy revived itself from the global onslaught of dictatorship as “monitory democracy”, with provisions for constant public scrutiny of the government. The Indian experiment championed that model with federalization of government, panchayati raj, flourishing regional parties, minority quotas, student elections, lok adalats and public interest litigation.
Keane called ours the “banyan democracy”, with deep roots, many trunks, tall branches and all. But like all forms of democracy, “monitory democracy” is also susceptible to morphing into a state in which people withdraw from politics, and market failures, social inequality, intolerance and environmental damages trigger backlashes beyond the State’s control.
With the rise of market forces in India, the business of winning elections has made our parties and governments pander to vote banks, embrace criminals, bypass the laws of the land and thrive on corruption. In this, barring the almost-defunct Left and the still-nascent Aam Aadmi Party, there is little to distinguish India’s principal political alternatives that are all dependent on corporate funding.
The absence of ideological difference among them is all too evident from the way politicians hop parties and parties switch alliances. Beyond the rants against pseudo-secularism and Hindu nationalism, even election manifestos do not offer much difference in policy choices on key issues such as agriculture, water resources, mining, energy, subsidies or incentives.
In this election, all we have been told is that the BJP is in the fray to ensure good governance and high growth; the Congress to help the poor and big investors; the likes of the Trinamool Congress or the AIADMK to emerge as the third largest party; and a host of others to broker fluid alliances.
In his 2007 book Why We Hate Politics, Colin Hay of the Paris Institute of Political Studies challenged the conventional view that people are responsible for the kind of politicians they get and argued instead that “democratic polities get the level of political participation they deserve”. Little wonder then that we need so many ‘Wake up, Vote’ campaigns by the Election Commission, NGOs and even beverage brands to coax the voter.
Insidiously, though, our deteriorating political atmosphere discourages the very quality participation necessary for redrawing the agenda. The language of propaganda shuffles between the vicious and the frivolous. There is no debate on how to secure the life, livelihood and dignity of millions. Instead, all we hear is about expendables ranging from marital liabilities of leaders to ‘apology’ demands for mass murders, with a random call to “go to Pakistan” thrown into the mix.
While we find assurance in the sight of young voters queuing up, the average age of Lok Sabha MPs has gone up by 7 years to 53 since 1951. High turnouts give us reassurance of fair elections while nearly one-third of Lok Sabha MPs are charged in criminal cases, including murder and abduction. We celebrate women voters but there remain only 58 women MPs in the Lok Sabha – a more than100 percent jump from the mere 5 percent representation in 1952, yet far below the global (22 percent) or even the Asian (18.5 percent) average.
If these are any indication of the state of our democracy, it is indeed a miracle that only a third of Indian voters are missing in action. And this is why this pro-change, anti-incumbent mega-turnout holds out a certain remarkable hope.
In the best-case scenario, the voter may finally be rewarded for her tenacious optimism. But if even a record turnout fails to break the sinister continuity of business-as-usual in the months to follow, the much-beguiled Indian voter may refuse to queue up the next time.
Yahoo News, 28 April, 2014
Then, as recently as in 2011, we were told that voting should not be considered a duty for many who, in fact, owe it to the rest of us not to vote. In The Ethics of Voting, political scientist Jason Brennan argued that unless citizens put in the hard work to become informed and upright voters, it’s better if they don’t pollute the polls with their spurious votes.
The millions of Mumbai voters who stayed away from polling booths last week might comfort Fiorina. And Brennan’s argument seemed to make sense when candidates such as Medha Patkaraccused their opponents of distributing cash to buy votes, or when I visited Jharkhand’s Latehar where entire hamlets waited till the poll eve for cues from their village heads, who were away striking deals with candidates.
Yet nothing seems to legitimize a democracy more for us than a high voter turnout. Besides making the election process more representative, mass participation endorses claims that the so-called system is working just fine.
So the biggest good news so far from these ongoing Lok Sabha polls is that the first seven phases till April 24 in the 349 constituencies in 24 states and Union Territories have recorded the highest-ever voter turnout in any Lok Sabha polls since 1951. The national aggregate so far is 66 percent against 57.53 percent for the same constituencies in 2009. In terms of numbers, that is 35 crore votes against the 21.49 crore cast five years ago. Counting of postal ballots will only take the tally higher. Reports of lakhs of names missing from electoral rolls only show that we have missed the opportunity to record an even bigger turnout.
This upswing of the Indian voter turnout is truly remarkable in the backdrop of receding interest among voters across the world.
In the US, the turnout for presidential polls slipped from 73 percent in 1900 to 58 percent in 2012. In the UK, participation in parliamentary polls came down from 83 percent in 1951 to 65 percent in 2010. Europe's strongest economy Germany saw 72 percent turnout in 2013, down from 86 percent in 1953. With only 59 percent voting in 2012, even Japan saw a drop of 17 percentage points over six decades since 1952.
Indian voters have been rather consistent in maintaining a moderate 55-64 percent turnout over six decades. Barring the war years of 1962 and 1971, voter turnout for general elections never slipped below the 60 percent mark before 1980. It rode the sympathy wave after Indira Gandhi's assassination to scale an all-time high of 64 percent in 1984. Since then, the only two times the turnout crossed 60 percent were in 1989 and 1998 when voters brought themselves to believe in the political alternatives that VP Singh and AB Vajpayee, respectively, promised. Both times, their optimism went unrewarded as neither Singh nor Vajpayee proved be the promised game-changers and were soon dislodged themselves by voters.
Usually, a swing for or against a candidate or party mobilizes voters in large numbers. In the Assembly polls last year, most states registered record turnouts. If Delhi swung for the AAP, Rajasthan rejected the Congress. Madhya Pradesh and Tripura backed the incumbents en masse.
So do the claims of a ‘Modi wave’ and the obvious anger at the corruption-laden Congress government explain the current spurt in turnout? Is it also a broader endorsement of our political and economic system?
“This is not a manifestation of any sudden swing for any party,” says professor Sanjay Kumar, co-director of Lokniti, a research program of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS). “We have seen high turnout in all Assembly polls in the last few years. The credit goes to the Election Commission that launched its latest voter awareness campaign [SVEEP] in 2010. Cleaning up electoral rolls in urban areas by removing dead, duplicate or absent voters has also helped.”
Kumar also credits political parties and their innovative campaigns for energizing voters. “But the biggest factor is probably the participation of women voters,” he says. In the first five phases till April 12, women registered a higher turnout than men in Chandigarh, Arunachal Pradesh, Lakshadweep, Meghalaya, Goa and Sikkim.
The trend has been consistent since 2010 as women voters overtook men in Assembly polls in states such as Bihar, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Manipur, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram. In a slow but steady progress, women brought down a 16.68 percent gender gap in turnout in 1962 to less than 8 percent in 1998. Another decade and now they have begun to catch up. The bad news, though, is the skewed sex ratio (down from 945 in 1941 to 927 in 1991) and that only 883 women voters were registered per 1000 men voters in 2014.
New voters usually vote, and the new 10 crore in these elections are also contributing to the big turnout. But a large number of youth come of age as first-time voters in every election. The key factor pushing the turnout this time is probably the other first-timer – the woman voter who became eligible earlier but did not vote before 2014. Little wonder then that the poll at the two-thirds stage (349 seats) has already recorded 13.55 crore more votes – higher than the total 10 crore new voters put together – than in 2009.
Sociologist Dipankar Gupta considers the high level of engagement as much a sign of awareness as of dissatisfaction. “Turnout goes up whenever there is a crisis or tension,” he points out. “We are undergoing a period of tension with growing resentment against corruption and concern for the economy. This turnout is seeking change. Ironically, the only change these voters can bring about is that of political leadership and not of policies.”
Plus ça change
Our voter turnout (so far) might have hit an all-time-high of 66 percent, but the larger question remains: why have Indian voter turnouts been consistently limited to only a thin majority of 55-64 percent over the last six decades?
When it comes to policies, our principal political parties have been mirror images of one another. This lack of a real choice and the resultant inability of voters to significantly improve their lot have created a sense of futility among a large section over time.
Of course, there is nothing Indian about this. “This is a global reality. There is not much to choose between the Republicans or the Democrats [in the US] beyond, maybe, a healthcare bill or such. The political alternatives do not really offer policy options. It is the same system that works,” says Gupta.
The global disenchantment with politics-as-usual is finding rakish voices in the popular media. “Why be complicit in this ridiculous illusion?” scoffed British “socialist comedian” Russell Brand in a BBC interview last year. American satirist PJ O’Rourke wrote his 2010 book, Don’t Vote – It Just Encourages The Bastards, from a conservative position very different from Brand’s.
In India, it usually takes Naxalite organizations to call poll boycotts and not many have heeded them this month in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. And yet, at least one-third of our voters usually don’t turn up to vote.
The convenient explanation for limited voter participations is that the affluent city dweller has been too self-absorbed to vote, particularly after liberalization. But only one-third of India’s voters are in urban areas and a large number of them are by no means affluent. Besides, as Gupta points out, the urban voter is often politically more active and rapid urbanization has pushed many erstwhile rural voters to political participation.
Instead, it would appear that millions of Indians in both towns and villages are getting increasingly disillusioned with the efficacy of their franchise. Not all of them are necessarily poor. They have exhausted their options – or watched their elders do so – on political alternatives without achieving any tangible change. Indeed, their participation in polls would have been much lower in the absence of cheap election freebies.
That we are happy to celebrate a two-third turnout takes some shine off the Indian experiment that John Keane, political scientist and author of The Life and Death of Democracy (2009), described as democracy’s “most compound, turbulent and exciting” prototype.
After World War II, democracy revived itself from the global onslaught of dictatorship as “monitory democracy”, with provisions for constant public scrutiny of the government. The Indian experiment championed that model with federalization of government, panchayati raj, flourishing regional parties, minority quotas, student elections, lok adalats and public interest litigation.
Keane called ours the “banyan democracy”, with deep roots, many trunks, tall branches and all. But like all forms of democracy, “monitory democracy” is also susceptible to morphing into a state in which people withdraw from politics, and market failures, social inequality, intolerance and environmental damages trigger backlashes beyond the State’s control.
With the rise of market forces in India, the business of winning elections has made our parties and governments pander to vote banks, embrace criminals, bypass the laws of the land and thrive on corruption. In this, barring the almost-defunct Left and the still-nascent Aam Aadmi Party, there is little to distinguish India’s principal political alternatives that are all dependent on corporate funding.
The absence of ideological difference among them is all too evident from the way politicians hop parties and parties switch alliances. Beyond the rants against pseudo-secularism and Hindu nationalism, even election manifestos do not offer much difference in policy choices on key issues such as agriculture, water resources, mining, energy, subsidies or incentives.
In this election, all we have been told is that the BJP is in the fray to ensure good governance and high growth; the Congress to help the poor and big investors; the likes of the Trinamool Congress or the AIADMK to emerge as the third largest party; and a host of others to broker fluid alliances.
In his 2007 book Why We Hate Politics, Colin Hay of the Paris Institute of Political Studies challenged the conventional view that people are responsible for the kind of politicians they get and argued instead that “democratic polities get the level of political participation they deserve”. Little wonder then that we need so many ‘Wake up, Vote’ campaigns by the Election Commission, NGOs and even beverage brands to coax the voter.
Insidiously, though, our deteriorating political atmosphere discourages the very quality participation necessary for redrawing the agenda. The language of propaganda shuffles between the vicious and the frivolous. There is no debate on how to secure the life, livelihood and dignity of millions. Instead, all we hear is about expendables ranging from marital liabilities of leaders to ‘apology’ demands for mass murders, with a random call to “go to Pakistan” thrown into the mix.
While we find assurance in the sight of young voters queuing up, the average age of Lok Sabha MPs has gone up by 7 years to 53 since 1951. High turnouts give us reassurance of fair elections while nearly one-third of Lok Sabha MPs are charged in criminal cases, including murder and abduction. We celebrate women voters but there remain only 58 women MPs in the Lok Sabha – a more than100 percent jump from the mere 5 percent representation in 1952, yet far below the global (22 percent) or even the Asian (18.5 percent) average.
If these are any indication of the state of our democracy, it is indeed a miracle that only a third of Indian voters are missing in action. And this is why this pro-change, anti-incumbent mega-turnout holds out a certain remarkable hope.
In the best-case scenario, the voter may finally be rewarded for her tenacious optimism. But if even a record turnout fails to break the sinister continuity of business-as-usual in the months to follow, the much-beguiled Indian voter may refuse to queue up the next time.
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