Votes in the wind

Clearly, something’s changed and a proposition must be examined. State regimes, by working on Centrally-sponsored schemes like NREGS as well as those initiated locally, are restoring the principle of the state not as mai-baap but as the critical agent responsible for enabling all citizens to achieve their potential.

States have much more money at their disposal than they did before — thanks in large measure to higher revenues because of a booming growth rate over the past few years — and they can afford to take up welfare schemes without wrecking their budgets. The gap is still large between, for example, south Indian states and the Bimaru ones, but figures over the past few years show the gap may be narrowing. If you look at state spending from the state’s budget on the social sector, per capita annually, between 2001-2 to 2004-5 as compared to the same figure for 2004-5 to 2007-8, Madhya Pradesh went up from Rs 1094 to Rs 1695, and Chhattisgarh more markedly from Rs 1416 to Rs 2668. Now, this is still lower than in states like Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, but the magnitude of increase is telling. It is possible therefore that local governments may have again discovered a constituency for higher spends on social sector services. Governments here have somewhat effectively and widely publicised this fact in various ways, it would appear, and have got taken seriously by voters in local elections.

What’s visible social spending? A paper, “Linkages between government spending, growth, and poverty in rural India”, on the basis of data from states between 1970 and 1993 (by Shenggen Fan, Peter Hazell and Sukhadeo Thorat), studied the impact of various kinds of government spending on levels of rural poverty. It found that the impact of more and better roads stood out as the top variable impacting rural poverty. The roads serve as arteries and had a positive and significant impact on wages in the countryside and productivity. In a recent essay (‘Democracy and Economic Transformation in India’), Partha Chatterjee also argued how the state over the past few years has stepped in slowly to try and fill the vacuum in parts of underdeveloped India given up for lost. It is possible that central Indian state governments are reaping the benefits from this policy.

So, while the India Shining campaign in 2004 came in for much ridicule and did not quite work to push the notion of feel-good in large parts of restless India, it was perhaps some sort of precursor to what the UPA also chose to do. The UPA, eventually, put large parts of increased revenue in social schemes, urban renewal, employment guarantees, right to food, etc. Critics on the left may argue that enough has not been done, but the “inclusive growth” chant by the Centre has defined their policy pitch and their politics. A measured approach to try and encash political goodwill from increased social spending has helped Indians feel co-opted, unlike in India Shining, which somehow made Indians not quite there feel poorly and more conscious of what they did not have, and yet aspired to get.

This is not to say that caste, community, association and kinship with candidates do not matter and inform voter choices. Corruption and the image of the chief minister or chief ministerial candidate did matter too in these assembly elections. So, the larger narrative remained delivery on development and social welfare issues. What local governments stood for, and what their mechanism for arranging the delivery of what they promised was, seemed to be tested in these state elections.

This is also not to say that the general elections in 2009 would be fought on the same parameters. These states are big, and while they may have witnessed the growing abundance of “others” in the results tally this time, they do not mirror the electoral landscape of a national election. But in a way, the ruling dispensation and the NDA have been shown two possibilities. There is what you may call the Madhya Pradesh way, and the Delhi way. If the Congress ends up with no cohesion or thought in its campaign and a thousand turf wars, it’s the MP-like downhill road they might find themselves tumbling down. Likewise, the BJP, if it approaches these elections with the smugness of an opposition banking on a statistical certainty of a win on anti-incumbency, and with old ideas, tasteless blood splattered campaigns on a wing and a prayer, they might discover that the Delhi experience, the V.K. Malhotra phenomenon, was just the dress rehearsal.

But, then again, there is always the much ignored Mizoram model, the country’s most urbanised state and second most literate — inspiration for both here. The Congress swept 32 of the 40 seats on offer. Hope for the BJP from here? It was a resounding anti-incumbency vote that threw out the government.

seema.chishtiexpressindia.com