Going to town

THERE8217;S now so much evidence that the urban vox populi is going against the Congress that a political observer from, say, Mars would be convinced that the party by now has a firm strategy. The Martian, of course, doesn8217;t know the Congress. As a report in The Sunday Express on the Delhi municipal elections clearly pointed out, the Congress seems to be harbouring a fantasy that cities are populated by the wealthy, who either don8217;t vote or don8217;t vote for the 8216;pro-people8217; Congress. This thesis, as these columns have pointed out more than once, was born out of the excitement following the unexpected 2004 verdict. Farmers had supposedly voted the Congress in and they apparently wanted protection from rapacious market-wallahs.

Would that the Congress be a little rapacious about the market. It would help them, for example, with farmers keen to exploit market opportunities. It would also help them to connect with lower income urban groups, whose daily contact with market economics is often more than the better-off classes. Below middle class urban citizens, who include small entrepreneurs as well as many migrants for whom market-created jobs are vital, are not particularly comforted by statist interventions that protect public sector jobs from demands of efficiency or protect the better-off from utility rate hikes. They are also 8212; and this is a tribute to political economic dynamism of reforms 8212; aspirational. They don8217;t want to live in cities as taken-for-granted background noise. They want to be heard. They thought they had been heard when in 2004 8211; the wealthy as usual didn8217;t vote in large numbers 8211; their vote won the Congress a majority of the urban constituencies.

The BJP was shocked at losing so much of the urban vote it and everyone else had thought will go to the party. The Congress didn8217;t realise at all what it had been gifted. Indian democracy is nothing if not a ruthless reminder service. The reminders are coming in now. And it is not as if the Congress has done a fantastic job of cornering the rural poor8217;s vote either. With the exception of Andhra Pradesh, better performing states in the rural jobs programme are not Congress-ruled. That8217;s another statistic that would make sense on Mars, but not to the Congress.