Who is the “educated” voter?

En route to Delhi yesterday, my friend in Newark told me that her mother in Mumbai voted for the Congress because she could not find the symbol her kaamwali had passionately campaigned for. 

So much for those who suffer from the illusion that India’s illiterates are why we get incompetent governments and politicians.  My friend’s mother might neither think so nor might her kaamwali be illiterate.  But a large number of highly-qualified, middle-class Indians (often non-resident Indians, curiously) frequently couch their refusal to thoughtfully engage with the electoral process as cynicism. 

These “cynics” argue that their “carefully considered votes” are inconsequential given that the majority of the electorate is illiterate and, therefore, unable to weigh in as thoughtfully on issues and candidates.  (Interestingly, even Jawaharlal Nehru shared this elitist view in the early years of independent India but was convinced otherwise after India’s first two elections.)

I vehemently disagree.  India’s electorate has been predominantly illiterate for a long time.  Yet, since 1947, voters have, by and large, rewarded performers and punished laggards.  So the Congress was booted out in 1977 after the two-year “emergency,” the Janata Party defeated in 1980 following frequent bickering amongst its leaders for the Prime Minister’s chair, and the BJP-led NDA was sent to the opposition in 2004.  The evidence is more compelling in the states and indisputable in a number of individual constituencies.

Therefore, it is clear that while the majority of India’s electorate may not be “educated” they are smart enough to associate roads, hospitals, schools, jobs, water, and many other forms of “development” with political performance.  Further, the illiterates view their franchise as one of the last inalienable forms of expression in the fight against growing economic disparity.  Finally and more recently, they have realized the strength of numbers and are organizing themselves along key issues effectively marginalizing those too lazy to read, analyze, and vote. 

So the next time you don’t know whom to vote for, ask your driver, milkman, peon, chowkidar, dhobi, chaiwallah, or your mother’s kaamwali.

Delhi votes for development

India’s cities and its middle class have, unfortunately, played an enabling role in the rise of the BJP and its divisive religion-based politics.  (As an astute observer I admire said, “India’s middle class has degrees, no education.”)  Even so, they are marginal players, in broad terms, notwithstanding their explosive growth over the past 20 years.  This was evident in 2004 when the country’s predominantly-rural electorate rejected the NDA’s “India Shining” thesis.

Delhi was no different – and once the strongest of BJP bastions – but has become an interesting laboratory for the “development versus ideology” experiment over the past decade.  In 2008, Delhi’s voters returned a Congress government for the third time making Sheila Dikshit the country’s first longest-serving woman chief minister.  Over the past 10 years, Dikshit has zealously pursued a single-minded agenda transforming the crumbling capital into one of the world’s most livable cities.

In 10 years, Dikshit’s Congress government has doubled power generation (quadrupling it by 2011), water supply, and hospitals; tripled sewage treatment capacity; built (or is building) more than 130 flyovers and underpasses; switched over its bus transportation fleet to clean-burning natural gas dramatically reducing pollution; and implemented a world-class city-wide rail commuting system amongst other things.  This development track record has trounced the BJP’s ideological posturing in three consistent elections.

This is a heartening story because it shows that the strongest of ideological bastions can be stormed (and retained) with sustained political action emphasizing governance and development.  The validity of this political emphasis will be tested again in Delhi’s seven Lok Sabha seats.