India Banao!

In the recent national elections, Indian voters ushered in a new era in Indian politics that will reset political behavior and shift economic priorities. The election results surprised India’s elderly political class because today’s voters are much younger, more urban, and drenched in the 24×7 media flow. They are not satisfied with narrow, identity-based politics and unwilling to wait for a better tomorrow. They want results now. To that end, voters decisively rejected political parties based on caste, region, and community and instead rewarded good governance.

The long-awaited UPA budget, due in Parliament on July 6, will likely reflect these trends. Massive funding increases are likely for income support, food security, education, and primary health. A national identity system is being launched to streamline welfare delivery. Each of India’s 28 state governments will now be on the hook to spend these federal funds effectively and to deliver basic services to every village and urban slum. Sonia Gandhi’s message to the newly inducted Congress ministers: “perform or perish.”

Several major trends are reshaping the Indian electorate. First, hundreds of millions of young people are becoming eligible to vote. India’s median age is just 25. There were 43 million registered first-time voters in the 2009 general elections; by some estimates, there will be 100 million possible first-time voters in each of the next five elections. Second, India’s private sector has grown dramatically in the last decade, creating millions of well-paying jobs. Young people aspire to a job in the IT sector, not in the government. Third, India’s freewheeling media and telecom industries have penetrated even the deepest hinterlands. Remote villages have satellite TV with 150 channels and over 400 million mobile phone users receive text messages. Finally, India is urbanizing rapidly with the number of urban parliamentary seats growing, and migrant workers expecting urban services even in their distant villages.

India’s young electorate is thus increasingly well-informed and ready to bend the political system to its will. If political parties and candidates can demonstrate that they are improving public services at a local level, they win elections. If they do not, they are punished.

The 2009 elections reflected these trends. With no compelling national issues at stake, these elections became an aggregation of elections across India’s 28 states. Government performance in 22 states was positively rated in various independent surveys; the political parties running these governments won the majority of seats in their state. In six states, government performance was negatively rated, and these parties lost. Overall, the Congress won enough states to form a durable coalition government. The BJP did well in most of the states that it rules, but it lost heavily in states where it is the main opposition party to the Congress such as Rajasthan, Delhi, and Haryana.

However, the real game-changer in the 2009 elections has been the collapse of the identity-based regional parties and the Communists. In the past, these parties have typically won votes by stitching together various castes and communities into distributional coalitions. Such coalitions rose to prominence after the Mandal recommendations in the 1990s, but it appears that their time is now finally over.
The combined tally of the SP, RJD, LJP, and BSP in this elections plunged to 48 from 78 in the 2004 elections. In South India, the JD(S), PRP, TRS, TDP, MDMK, AIDMK, and DMDK saw their seat tally come in at 21 seats, much below expectations. Finally, the Communists’ seats dwindled from 59 to 24, as voters increasingly tire of their class warfare rhetoric.

Regional parties are largely dependent on a few individuals and their families. They have limited organizational and policy resources. Most party members are more intent in capturing the spoils of power than in serving their communities. On the other hand, the Congress and the BJP have well-developed organizations that have been built over decades. Both parties have successfully run state and national governments. Voters recognize that the Congress and the BJP will provide better governance than the regional parties. Thus Indian politics is transitioning from identity-based political mobilization to results-based governance. This shift may well lead to a less fragmented, relatively stable bipolar political system.

This shift will only happen if the two national parties are able to demonstrate good governance at the local level – and there is no escaping this reality. The Finance Minister will likely provide massive funds for various social programs, the national ID project promises accurate identification, and the district machinery will be constantly pressured to implement. However, it will be up to each state government to ensure efficiently and timely delivery. MPs and MLAs will also have to act as people’s agents and be laser-focused on delivery of public services. Their collective actions will determine which parties will win the next elections.

Indian voters’ demand for results could have a spectacular payoff. China was able to reduce the number of people living in extreme poverty from about 60% of its population in 1990 to about 16% in 2005. In India, the comparable reduction has been from 51% to 42%. By making the political system much more accountable, more than 200 million destitute Indians might lift themselves out of poverty in the next decade. Such upward mobility would transform India and offer hope for every developing country.

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