Opinion Power trips

Yatras are journeys undertaken with a political objective in mind. They are about disseminating ideas and receiving them. They aim to make voters feel heard,even if not in full measure. In the day of the press statement,the clip,the click and the tweet,what explains this insistence on the old-fashioned way of getting to voters in their towns,street-corners and homes?

BJP contender Vasundhara Raje is leading a Suraj Sukalp Yatra in Rajasthan. The TDP’s Chandrababu Naidu,who started such a journey in Andhra Pradesh on October 2 last year,only concluded it in Srikakulam on May Day. CPM leaders criss-crossed the country earlier this year as part of a “jatha”. Lalu Prasad found it necessary to undertake a long yatra revisiting his state,before his rally this month. A Congress-led Parivartan Yatra was on in Chhatisgarh too,till tragically cut short.

Yatras,though,are often derided as perfunctory political rituals and not considered effective or smart politics. Party campaigners have tended to deploy the chopper or small aircraft much more routinely in the past decade,even to destinations covered by regular flights,trains or road. It appears that our political representatives are consumed by the need for speed. As long as they are trailed by TV cameras,they seem to think it enough to paratroop in to make a speech and rush back,tick a box and be done with it.

The idea of the political journey may have many historical echoes. But it is now well acknowledged that about a century ago,when the barrister M.K Gandhi returned from South Africa,it was the yatra that gave him his politics. His grandson Rajmohan Gandhi’s book,Mohandas: A True Story of a Man,his People and an Empire,recalls how Gandhi reached Muzaffarpur station in the middle of the night and was missed by J.B. Kriplani and his reception party despite all the “lanterns” they carried,because they did not expect Gandhi to travel third class.

Later,Gandhi urged some very elite lawyers of Bihar (including Rajendra Prasad,independent India’s first president) to travel out and be willing to serve without fees as the “peasants’ stenographers”,taking down their stories and complaints,often in Kaithi or Urdu or in local dialects that had not yet been heard by the rest of the world. Rajmohan Gandhi observes presciently: “They (the lawyers) agreed and in doing so,became without realising it,trainees for leadership in a national movement.” Gandhi’s Dandi Yatra and its impact is well known,but even in independent India,Vinoba Bhave’s “bhoodan” yatra or Chandrashekhar’s padyatra left a deep impact.

But in this so-called information era,where an abbreviated SMS is enough to transact bank business,get train tickets,health tips and much else,what is the use of personal contact ?

Plenty,it would appear. And political representatives of all hues seem to be cognisant of this fact. Despite having tools that enable connectivity and “outreach”,the fact of reaching out and travelling to places where people live and work has its own value,which cannot be easily substituted.

Elections in western democracies like the UK and the US,which have lower voting percentages and a narrower spectrum of issues and voter types,continue to involve extensive road journeys. However orchestrated,few US presidential candidates have got away with not kissing hapless babies or eating burgers,with their baseball caps firmly on. Recall how badly things sank for him when former UK PM Gordon Brown’s (off-the-record) patronising quip about a woman questioning him was aired. Political scientists Alan S. Gerber and Donald P. Green of Yale University have concluded that lack of face-to-face contact between the representative and the voter has pulled down voter percentages in the US since the 1960s. They explained how door-to-door calls or even volunteer calls made a great difference to “bringing out the vote”,something that professional campaign consultants,commercial mail vendors and commercial phone banks had failed to do. In short,the impact of seeing a political representative trying to connect with you first hand,in your context,cannot be underestimated.

There is another reason why the yatra is rolled out. Given the glut of opinions all around,the loud and often manufactured chorus about the state of affairs,the best option for politicians is to step out and see for themselves. There is genuine confusion and no robust knowledge (distinct from data) of what voters want. The “revolution of rising expectations”,as Manmohan Singh put it at a seminar two years ago,is a bee in the neta’s bonnet. The voters of 2014 will be the youngest Indian electorate ever. But how different this electorate will be from the ones that came earlier is the real question.

Also,especially for the opposition,it may be worthwhile to travel in order to consolidate vague undercurrents into robust voter sentiments,barely articulated feelings into national trends. Or not. But without stepping out,they would never know.

The contact between people and politicians is transformative — it helps turn citizens into voters and pushes them to exercise their franchise. Apart from influencing the choices of prospective voters,the yatra changes the worldview of political representatives. It helps them understand,in an unmediated way,what their voters feel about policy and,therefore,what is likely to sway them. Within political parties,the average worker is at a disadvantage these days. Deep reliance on closed family networks is the bane of regional groupings and big parties alike. The yatra offers leaders a rare opportunity to connect with their context,reaching beyond their closed family groups and rings of advisors.

It is with good reason that political leaders,such as Y.S.R. Reddy’s family or L.K. Advani,still recall the stellar difference yatras made to their political fortunes. No wonder they are always anxious to try and rework some of that magic.

Yatras are not just about going local,adding colour or providing interesting photo-ops. They have made a substantial difference at times. Some seriously believe,for instance,that road construction would have been expedited if politicians had decided to ditch the chopper and travel by jeep.

The transformative powers of the yatra could be one of the reasons the BJP called off its national jail-bharo campaign this month. Maybe there was a belated realisation that pushing their leaders into stuffy jails is the opposite of what the largest opposition party should be doing now,which is trying to reach out and understand what India wants or expects. Expect even incumbents to travel out now. A breath of fresh air wins over recycling tired old strategies any day.

seema.chishti@expressindia.com