Understanding India’s Elections

Between April 11 and May 19, over 900 million Indians, from urban professionals to remote tribespeople, will vote in India’s multiphase general elections to elect the 17th Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament), which in turn will select a new prime minister after votes are counted on May 23. The election primarily pits the Hindu-nationalist right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi against the center-left Indian National Congress (INC) led by dynastic scion Rahul Gandhi. Both the BJP and Congress lead separate alliances of like-minded parties, the center-right National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the center-left United Progressive Alliance (UPA). But there are many other parties and forces in the running, including regional parties from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu.

Like most national elections, the proportion of seats that the BJP and Congress get in the large, populous northern and central Hindi-speaking states will decide the outcome, though the election will be fought throughout the country. India’s election results are far from predictable. There are several possible permutations of party coalitions post-election and several factors will drive voter’s choices.

Employment and the distribution of the fruits of India’s economic growth to all segments of its population are the primary concerns of the electorate. India’s GDP has grown at a steady and impressive rate, averaging between 6.5 and 7 percent, during the Modi government. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has nearly doubled since 2014, and several industries, such as automobiles and telephones, have boomed. Yet this hasn’t translated to jobs.

Agriculture is still the largest employer in India. The BJP lost India’s 2004 election because its urban-centric “India Shining” message was perceived as leaving farmers behind, and the Congress Party has sought to capitalize on similar themes in 2019, in order to seek victory by enacting policies that appeal to this constituency.  But 2019 will not be like 2004.

According to data from the World Bank, in 2004 almost 57 percent of India’s workforce was employed in the agricultural sector; in 2018, the figure had fallen to 41.6 percent. While agriculture and farmers remain an important constituency in India, their share is steadily declining. No party, not the large parties or the smaller regional ones, has policies that will alleviate the issues facing farmers, many of which are systemic, and require major changes and modernization in India’s approach to agriculture. India needs more public spending on education, skills training, and infrastructure, in order to help farmers transition to a more modern, industrial, and services oriented economy.

Many farmers, fed up with the BJP, will vote for Congress; these voters will be swayed by the party’s promise to hand out 6,000 rupees (about $86) a month to the poorest fifth of households in the country. Yet the question remains if enough will do so, because there is no guarantee that a Congress government at the center would be any better for the agricultural sector than a BJP government. Under both the BJP and Congress, systemic changes have been neglected in favor of handouts and poverty relief schemes that often involve little more than “guaranteed employment” by way of digging ditches. Handouts are useful in the short term, and can keep families going through hard times, but they are not a long-term solution, and won’t win any constituency over permanently to one party.

The urban middle class will play a greater role in this election than ever before because of its increased size and increased political awareness among the young. Despite the problems besetting the middle class, including underemployment and a scarcity of jobs, educated, urban individuals are less likely to vote for the more poor and rural-oriented Congress, unless they have a strong ideological aversion to the BJP, which is certainly the case with some urban liberals.

According to a report by a Bengaluru-based private university, 5 million Indians lost their jobs between 2016 and 2018, with educated, urban men among the hardest hit. While this occurred under a BJP government, the focus of Congress on the poor, and of regional parties on caste and ethnic issues, does little to rectify the issue of urban employment. Presumably, the urban middle class will bear the burden of any tax increase for handouts to the poor. A plan to provide guaranteed urban employment for a hundred days is a stopgap, not a solution. It is unclear if the Congress has anything better to offer than the BJP when it comes to growing the private sector, which alone has the ability to absorb the millions of engineers, business majors, and IT professionals that are coming out of India’s universities. At least the BJP has improved India’s ease of doing business ranking, and brought in much foreign investment. Even if this won’t win the enthusiastic support of the urban middle class, this demographic is unlikely to help Congress either.

Nationalism and an interest in foreign relations are intellectual luxuries most often indulged in only when individuals are not living in abject poverty. The middle class is thus more likely to be swayed by recent events pertaining to national security, such as the Indian Air Force (IAF) strike against Balakot, Pakistan, in retaliation for a terrorist attack in Pulwama, Kashmir. But despite the BJP heavily playing up national security in the aftermath of the Balakot strike, economic issues and not terrorism will be the deciding issue in the 2019 election. At the most, national security will keep some undecided or wavering voters from defecting from the BJP.

So far, as the election has proceeded, voter turnout has been moderate to high. Turnout from the first phase, on April 11, was 69.43 percent. It is unclear if there is any direct correlation between turnout and the outcome of the elections. For example, one view, the result of an analysis by NDTV, holds that the BJP tends to perform better when turnout is lower because in such situations it can mobilize its highly dedicated cadres, whose share of the vote would be higher proportionate to that of the rest of the population, to deliver a district to the BJP. However, political scientist Neelanjan Sircar pointed out in last month’s magazine that “places that saw the highest spike in turnout [in 2014] corresponded to BJP victories,” suggesting that high turnout is a function of enthusiasm toward Modi.

Low voter turnout could also suggest indifference toward re-electing the BJP. The BJP’s base is certainly more ideologically motivated than the Congress’ and those of other parties, many of which are united only by competing sectarian desires, or the desire to keep the BJP out. Meanwhile the BJP has a coherent, long-term – though exclusionary – vision of what India’s future ought to be. This had led to a paradoxical situation for the BJP: It must double down on its Hindutva message to consolidate its base, and bring the Hindu right out to vote, while also trying to broaden its message and reconnect with its 2014 mantra of development in order to win the middle-class, young, and educated vote, which is wary of the older, aristocratic, less hip, more insular, and socialist India that Congress still seems to personify. The BJP must also employ different strategies in different parts of India, including the south and northeast, in order to win voters that do not share its brand of Hindutva particular to north and west India.

Regardless of this election’s outcome, in the coming years, the BJP must figure out how it can reconcile these two disparate elements, or, at some point, it will cede the centrist space to some alternative, more liberal, technocratic party.