Are Cash & Caste prime movers on the Indian elections scene?

Regionalism has become a key factor in
The nation’s political one-upmanship

What are the prime movers and shakers of the political scene in India? What influences elections? Is it money? Is it caste? Is it regionalism? Is it the communal card? Is it good governance? Is it the image of the parties and the image of their leaders? Is it hunger, is it jobs, created or lost, is it poverty, is it distress on the farms or prosperity? Is it all of these in some way, but do cash and caste appear to stand out, especially in the game of vote banks and voter influence? Without money or big bucks, no party can expect to go far. In some way political outfits are like corporate outfits, with hierarchies and designations and positions starting at the top and going down to the district, taluka and village level. At voting time or prior to that and afterwards, doles and drink, leave alone apparel, play no smart part? But nobody thinks or talks about these any more and takes them for granted as an unavoidable and necessary evil.

The just completed round of Assembly elections in six States bring several issues to the fore, but caste, often sought to be played down in the context of the New Millennium and changing world, continues to play its part. The major national parties benefit from it directly or indirectly or hurt by it by a relatively new player, who seeks to corner the downtrodden Scheduled Castes to show its political muscle. In some Assembly elections in the previous two or three years, the BJP won more seats in Gujarat, Himachal and Karnataka than it did on its own because some of the caste votes defeated Congress by narrow margins in those three States. But in November, quite surprisingly, the BJP got the rough edge in the Delhi Assembly voting by losing a good ten seats to the Congress because Ms. Mayawati’s vote bank won her just a few seats for her own candidates, but influenced the result of the two main contenders.

Will this trend be visible in the elections to the Lok Sabha in the next summer, which will be one of the biggest political show in the world in the year 2009 with several hundred million voters going to the polls in what is known as the largest democracy of the world.

Already, the world has seen the most dazzling election in the US where 100 million voters chose a new President after two years of hectic electioneering. The cost: billions of dollars, which included a dinner plate costing up to $5,000 apiece for the opportunity to be able to sit very close to the hopeful President. Massive contributions were made to the election funds openly and publicly in America. That does not happen or is not openly discussed in Indida, but without money, and big money, election contests are just not feasilble.

The Election Commission has no doubt built up a code of conduct and with the consent of political parties it has set limits to spending on the process of wooing and winning voters. There has been much talk of government funding of elections and weeding out corruption from the process. But that remains a distant prospect. Corrupt practices or overspending in the process of electioneering are at times issues taken to courts to unseat a winning candidate, but one hears less of it now because inflation has made it difficult and not worth the while of losers to go to courts.

Inclusive politics or associating the man in the street or aam adami in the process of decision making is a mantra that political parties and governments chant, but is it a lot of idealism like the Communist or some other parties’ socialistic ideology? At times, this may cut ice, at other times not. There is also the jargon of nationalism, rising above limited loyalties. When the parties win elections, they take credit of this factor, when they do not, they don’t talk about it. But the fact remains that regional parties in nearly half of India hold sway and the national parties are forced to bring these regional outfits into the mainstream to form a coalition government or remain some kind of an alliance even in the Opposition.

In this larger picture and in spite of divisive and diversionary trends, is India a functioning democracy, alive and kicking or is it flawed and agonized, ever trying to overcome the slings and arrows of harsh realities of 40 per cent of more than a billion people surviving or not surviving on the bare necessities and at times without them?

In the light of this, has the ongoing economic recession and still fairly high energy and commodity prices, especially for the citizen, become a crucial issue for the elections at the national level? There is a downturn no doubt, there have been job losses and there is pain among the populace and the leadership admits to it. It may not have been much of an issue in the State Assembly elections, but could be ruled out at the national level? Will the recent mayhem created by terrorists, leaving a trail or death and destruction also become one of the core issues? Will the government’s response to these crises convince the voters that the rulers are agile and active? Time will tell.