Campaigning ends, horse-trading begins

Campaigning ended today, 48 hours in advance of the final phase of voting on May 13.  In the last few days, the BJP-led NDA provided an energetic display of its “cohesion” by getting all its allies to share a platform in Ludhiana.  The Congress was pleasantly surprised by an enthusiastic response to Sonia Gandhi’s political rally in Uttar Pradesh.  Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party struggled to keep its flock together with bitter and distasteful infighting coming to the fore in the Rampur constituency.  Nitish Kumar’s bohomie with Narendra Modi raised eyebrows about the former’s secular credentials but also reinforced his perceived invincibility in Bihar.  More importantly, every major party toned their rhetoric and people’s expectations down about potential allies.  Politics will continue to be the art of the possible after May 16.

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.

Reporting from India

I am now in India and hope that my blogs will convey a bit of the election flavor from home.  That counting is on May 16 certainly influenced my visit’s timing.  After all, one of my best recent memories is being in India during the general election in May 2004.

By the way, try the Continental direct flight out of Newark to Delhi (or Mumbai).  Yesterday, Continental 82 got me to Delhi in a little over 12 hours.