Arvind Kejriwal’s victory is currently being viewed from the perspective of a development centred narrative coupled with a platitude of freebies offered by the Aam Admi Party (AAP). However, if one analyses past election results, voters have rejected pro-development governments on a number of occasions.
The governments of Narasimha Rao, as well as Vajpayee, were decisively rejected by the voters, despite their strong development-centric approaches. Freebies have been also rejected by voters – rejection of Congress’ Nyay scheme during the 2019 elections is a glaring example. What then makes Kejriwal so special that both factors – which have pushed many governments into oblivion – worked in favour of AAP?
The answer to these questions lies in Neuroscience. We have all read about Pavlov’s work on conditioned reflexes based on experiments, where an animal was given food and a bell was rung. After a while, the animal started feeling hungry and began to salivate when the bell was rung. This is also called classical conditioning where, a conditioned stimulus e.g. the sound of a bell, is paired with unconditioned stimulus e.g. food which evokes salivation which is an unconditioned response requiring no training.
After the pairing is repeated, the animal demonstrates a conditioned (or doctored) response to the conditioned stimulus or the external agent. The key observation is that repeated enforcement of a given pattern at the mental level, can actuate specific action patterns. This is exactly, what Kejriwal has done.
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He did not offer a one-time waiver of loans to people, as many other governments have done, as people are not only likely to forget it with time but their aspirations also rise, leading to an increase in anti-incumbency. Kejriwal partially waived off electricity and water bills, which impacted the public periodically while entrenching his image as a family caretaker.
Kejriwal identified two other areas, from which a conditioned response could be evoked within a definite timeframe – education and health. He knew that improving the quality of education in government schools was extremely difficult to achieve in the short run, so he focused mainly on building classrooms in schools. Most people tend to cross a site near a school on a daily basis.
The emergence of huge buildings can convince people into believing that the quality of education is changing for the better. It affects parents, wards and the general public on a daily basis. Kejriwal also directed the remaining efforts towards the health sector. He set up Mohalla clinics, which may not offer quality health services, but the thought of someone in one’s neighbourhood, to attend to them during distress can be a great mental stimulus for the voters.
Voters queue at a polling booth for the New Delhi assembly election in the Indian capital on February 8, 2020. Photo: Reuters
Kejriwal has always believed in making immediate and short term impact with minimal efforts. His odd-even scheme to control rising air pollution in the city was mostly hype and little substance, but people did talk about it while enhancing his pro-development image. His more recent efforts towards making bus transportation free for women also fall along this direction.
The voters of Delhi have failed to realise that Kejriwal’s investment in infrastructure-based projects, something which was radically done by the Sheila Dikshit government, has drastically fallen behind. For example, capital expenditure, which is associated with investments in infrastructure, has fallen to 0.54% of GSDP in 2018-19 from 1.16% in 2011-12. Declining tax revenues, which have dropped from 5.49% of GSDP in 2015-16 to 4.93% in 2018-19, are a cause of concern. But then, people tend to get swayed by actions having an immediate impact and this is one of the key pitfalls of democratic process.
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The BJP government had sufficient time towards initiating a set of efforts directed towards creating a specific pro-development image and associated cognitive states in Delhi. For example, they could have set up dozens of central universities, hospitals and schools for residents, which could have had a cascading effect on people’s psyche.
Instead, the BJP chose to focus on things, which had absolutely very little cognitive value. Sentiment driven elements can also have strong cognitive values, but only when other narratives are absent. A typical middle-class family in Delhi cares little about Article 370, CAA and the Ram Temple. The BJP’s rise in vote share is mostly driven by the disenchantment of a class which is fed up with schemes which benefit people and who do not pay direct taxes. It does not imply support for BJP’s particular strategies, which would actually have minimal effect in their mental day to day lives.
In the context of Modi’s return to power, his schemes focusing on the construction of toilets, electricity connection and gas supplies in the rural sector also had a very strong cognitive value. The Balakot strikes galvanised his image as a strong leader, who could take decisive decisions. But in recent times, the impact of these narratives is slowly fading and people need newer and stronger initiatives which could excite favourable cognitive patterns. That has been one of the key reasons behind the BJP’s dismal performance in key state elections.
There are significant barriers when it comes to replicating Kejriwal’s model at the national level. Offering free transport or waiving off electricity bills on a large scale is not economically feasible. Hence, AAP may find it difficult to leverage these successes on a pan India level, as his actions have localised cognitive values, confined to Delhi.
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However, AAP does pose a significant threat as other governments may misread his adventurism in the field of freebies and can create a catastrophic burden on the taxpayer. Despite all these, he has sent a strong lesson to other governments that by focusing on health, education and basic necessities, voters’ thoughts can be significantly swayed in a specific direction, cutting across caste and religious lines, which carries some hope for the future.
Kejriwal has conditioned the psyche of Delhi in a manner that residents tend to strongly associate water, electricity, transportation, school and healthcare with him, which accounts for his grandiose victory in the heart of Hindi heartland.
Dhiraj Sinha holds a doctorate from the University of Cambridge. He has authored several research papers in the field of systems driven far away from equilibrium.