April 12, 2014

India Takes to the Polls: An Interview with Matthew Rudolph

http://journal.georgetown.edu/2014/04/15/india-takes-to-the-polls-an-interview-with-matthew-rudulph/

Matthew Rudolph, Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Georgetown University, sat down with

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the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs to discuss his recent research and insights into India’s nationwide 16th Lok Sabha general election, which began on 7 April 2014 and continues through 16 May 2014.

GJIA: What factors set Indian election cycles apart from other global democratic processes, and what specifically makes the 16th Lok Sabha elections unique from previous elections in Indian history? MR: We often think of India less frequently because it is a younger democracy than many European and American ones, but 870 million voters—the largest democratic exercise on the planet—make it a serious point of gravity in global democracy. The electoral process in India is countrywide and top-down. It is not regulated at the state level like it is in the United States, and it has been all-electronic since 2004. We think of India as a poor, developing country and— rightly—as having challenges to infrastructure and modern amenities from the household level all the way up to ports, roads, and rails, but in the exercise of the democratic franchise, it is far ahead of the United States. In India, the poor vote in much greater numbers than the middle class and the rich, the reverse of what we see elsewhere, particularly the United States. Very high voting percentages compared to the United States and other places, and a very active election commission, help ensure the integrity of the voting process. People

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“In terms of economic policymaking and its effect on overall economic performance and how that plays into the election, recent slow growth has meant fewer jobs, less satisfaction, and more grievances, and those are piling onto other issues.”

sometimes note instances of violence or vote-rigging in Indian elections, but when you have an electorate of that size, the outcomes are less likely to be tainted by a few of these instances. Given the difficulty of regulating anything in India, from traffic to food safety, the fact that elections go as well as they do is a testament both to the political culture of the country—the fact that people are committed to elections, take them seriously, and consider them legitimate—and to the efficacy of the election commissions. GJIA: You recently returned from a trip to India. What was the nature and intent of your visit? MR: The main purpose for the trip had to do with an award my parents were getting, but since I was there I thought I would do some research of my own. I had several meetings, the most interesting of which was at the Secretariat of the Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of the Indian Parliament. The Rajya Sabha is akin to the United States Senate, but much less consequential in its legislative role and indirectly elected [rather than] by voters. I am doing a research project on political symbolism in the parliament building itself, which is associated with a larger project on the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), so I went to the Secretariat to get information, access to their archives, and permission to do photography and interviews. I also went to the informal campaign headquarters of the Congress Party, where we actually have a Georgetown student on leave this semester working in a hands-on and consequential role on the campaign. I spoke for 45 minutes with the Minister of Rural Development, a loyalist of the Ghandi-Nehru family and Congress Party member who is also an independent thinker—you could think of him as the Nancy Pelosi of India. We talked about campaign strategy and priorities for the Congress Party, and it is an unusual fact of his personality that he could be cheerful discussing this because the situation for the Congress Party [going into the election] is pretty grim. GJIA: How has India faired economically, politically, and socially under the coalition government the Congress Party has headed since its election in 2004 and reelection in 2009? How has this recent political history shaped the issues most important to the current election?

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MR: The Congress Party probably would not have done well in this election even if it had managed to keep the economy going at pre-2008 levels. Two rounds of incumbency [have led to] voter fatigue. However, it probably would not have suffered as much as it is likely to. In terms of economic policymaking and its effect on overall economic performance and how that plays into the election, recent slow growth has meant fewer jobs, less satisfaction, and more grievances, and those are piling onto other issues. The most consequential issues hurting the Congress are accusations of corruption and an inability to respond to [both] these accusations and actual instances of corruption in a way that suggests the party has internal dynamism and resilience. The corruption itself, of course, has a secondary effect of dampening domestic and international investment enthusiasm and economic dynamism, hurting the credibility of the government and threatening the sense that it is accountable. Even during the United Progressive Alliance, the first Congress-led coalition running from 2004 to 2009, there was not as much dynamism and economic policymaking as there should have been. The main reason for this is that in the first two or three years the Congress was supported by a group of left-wing Marxist and Communist parties that were opposed to energetic reform. The Congress should have jettisoned those partners, and they probably could have. They should have called a snap election in 2005, a year after they were voted into office, when they were very popular, and gotten rid of those coalition partners. But the tactical and strategic mindset of Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, the prime minister and head of the party, respectively, were too conservative. Once you hit 2009, the global economic crisis, a slowdown of global demand, and problems with the domestic Indian business cycle became external to India and the party’s ability to control them. There are always going to be shocks in the global economy and oscillations in the business cycle, and that is why you need dynamic economic policymaking. The prime minister is an economist himself and should know that. In that sense, the Congress Party is guilty of not doing things that it should have known to do. In much of the media, people forget that when the BPJ coalition was in power between 1998 and 2004, they too had many corruption scandals, and they too—in some cases—failed to make crucial economic reforms. It is easy to see the

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failings and errors of the most recent office holders and incumbents as the most consequential ones, but the fact is that their predecessors had many of the same kinds of problems. GJIA: What do you consider to be the most likely outcome when polls close on 16 May 2014? I put a greater probability on a surprise outcome than many other analysts do. Most other people seem to be putting that unusual outcome, which is either a Congress-led coalition or a third front-led coalition, in the 2-8 percent range. I put it a little higher than that, at 10 or 15 percent. The high probability outcome, a BJP-led coalition, will be historic and unique in that it will establish an oscillation between these two major parties for power. To an American audience, that is akin to the post-Civil War entrenchment of a Democratic-Republican cycle. If the BJP wins this year, we will have had two cycles of this since the late 1990s in Indian democracy as well. If this most likely outcome does come to pass, this pattern will be in place for a longer period of time—30, 40, or 50 years. It will be the beginning of the entrenchment of that cycle. It is also likely that it will force an awareness and, in a sense, a realignment, of the relationship between the national parties and the regional parties they need to court and cooperate with to secure a coalition. GJIA: Which key demographics have been appealed to by the candidates and coalitions, and with which demographics have different coalitions experienced success? MR: It is risky to characterize Indian democracy as opportunistic and cynical in appealing to what are called vote banks. These are typically caste groups or religious groups—for example, the Congress Party appealing specifically to Muslim and rural poor voters and the BJP appealing to small traders, upper caste Hindus. These patterns are well established and will continue in this election. Two things in this election are unusual. One is a fight for the youth. Both parties, in a way they have never done before, are fighting for the youth vote. This is probably why Rahul Gandhi is being nudged forward as the candidate for the Congress Party. Although he also comes from the Nehru-Gandhi dynastic line and therefore has built-in name recognition with the electorate, he is also a young person. Narendra Modi, who is in his late 50s or early 60s, is younger, more dynamic, and more energetic than many prime ministerial candidates in recent years, and is trying

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to use that to appeal to the youth. When I was at the Congress informal campaign headquarters last week, I learned about the ways in which the Congress campaign is using data-driven approaches to access the youth vote. Strangely, despite the awareness that the youth vote is important, there is very little actual use of youthful candidates or proxies. The very small number of people under the age of 40 who are consequential figures in Indian national politics is a general pattern, and something that many Indian domestic critics and outside observers find puzzling. In India, as in many other countries that have either powerful Marxist or Communist party organizations, there are youth party organs and entities including a Youth Congress and a BJP youth. There is an organizational focus on youth prevalent inside the party but outside of the public eye, the press, and the media. The BJP in particular is also looking for support from a group called the Other Backward Castes. These groups are in the bottom rungs of the Hindu caste hierarchy. They are above the Dalits—the formerly so-called Untouchables—have a reasonable social status, and are not generally suffering in oppressed conditions, but consider themselves to have a group identity. The BJP is targeting that group as well. GJIA: What obstacles confront the BJP’s Narendra Modi as a prime ministerial candidate? What criticisms have he and his party received? MR: There are three prominent criticisms [that pose] subsidiary obstacles for him. The first is his record. As Chief Minister during the 2002 Gujarat riots, he certainly did not take as many actions to prevent violence as he should have. It is possible he was actively negligent in an effort to provide supporters, who are Hindu nationalists, an opportunity to express themselves in the violent way they did. [He faces criticism from] both the Muslim communities that were victims of that and from other sympathetic groups like the Congress Party and a prominent party in the western state of Bihar led by Nitish Kumar, who last fall removed himself from the National Democratic Alliance coalition supporting the BJP and said he would not support them in the general campaign if Modi was the lead candidate. Modi has been asked to make amends for the 2002 riots, by secular sympathizers who want him to win, and he has had opportunities to do that. Symbolic politics are consequential in India, as they are in all countries. One way he could have done this is to have

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worn a Muslim skullcap and gone to pray at a mosque. He has been sympathetic to other religious groups like Christians and Parsis, but he has explicitly not taken steps to make amends with Muslims. The second obstacle is factionalism and discord in the BJP itself. Modi is younger and a Chief Minister, but he has not been a minister in the Union Cabinet. While he has been a party stalwart, he has not been active in the central party organization, and is considered somewhat of an outsider compared to the old guard. Regardless of what you think of the BJP, having outside blood and dynamism in the party is a good thing from a political science or strategic perspective. This is a classic example of patterns we see in the major parties in India. Old—70 or older—line incumbents and longtime party stalwarts who feel they deserve to be leaders of the party hold the best positions. In a sense, [Modi’s candidacy] should be a good thing for the BJP, but so far it has caused discord. It is possible that the publishing of the party manifesto and its platform is being held up by this infighting, possibly with the objective of sabotaging Modi’s prime ministerial candidature, perhaps to try to put him on the back foot in a way that would allow an older candidate to be in charge. Or it may just be that there is a lot of strategizing that has to go on because there is disagreement. It may not be quite that cynical. The third obstacle is that political power in the country has been shifting from the north, towards the south, where there are faster growing states, higher literacy levels, and more modern sectors of the economy. Though this has been happening since the late 1980s, Modi’s status as a Hindi/Gujarati speaker whose identity is firmly northern, not necessarily pan-Indian, could become an obstacle as political power shifts south. He is not very well known in the south because he has not been a union administer or an actor—to be a Bollywood or other actor gets you well known in India, just like Ronald Reagan in the United States. He does not have any of those things, so a third obstacle is his northernness, if you will. GJIA: In the event of a BJP-led coalition, what do you predict will be the most significant policy changes the BJP might enact? MR: Regardless of which government or which party is in power, there are tendencies in Indian politics through the legislative process and the political culture that tend to draw all parties toward a general

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commonality among policies. There is not much policy difference between the Congress and the BJP, much less many of the other parties—with the exception of the Marxist and Communist parties. We will probably see a more muscular verbal expression of Indian foreign policy, which will sound more energetic than under the Congress Party, but there will not be much real policy difference. I expect to see a number of economic measures, probably in insurance, bank licenses, roads, rails, and ports, to try to jump-start infrastructure. Under the last BJP government, there were efforts to provide private use of the rail system in which the actual rails continue to be owned by the rail ministry but the rolling stock and the trains could be from private companies. This would be an important difference. There was also a push for what was then called the Golden Quadrilateral—connecting the key points within India—and I would expect to see a lot of effort on that compared to the Congress Party. One of the reasons why the BJP is more likely to do that is because its infrastructure requires a lot more displacement in rural zones, and the BJP seems willing to do that whereas the Congress has a rural base.

Dr. Matthew Rudolph is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Georgetown University. Dr. Rudolph was interviewed by Elaine Li and Ian Philbrick on 4 April 2014.

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