Tag: lok sabha election 2024

Backstory: Have Indian Voters Found New Sources of Media to Help Them Understand Politics Better?

This election has signalled that the people of India are far more aware of their right to freedom of speech and expression as well as credible information. This is something that a government with an authoritarian instinct would need to digest.

The centrality of media consumption in setting election agendas has been a hotly contested debate among media theorists. Garnering data from the 1968 US presidential election, Maxwell E. McComb and Donald L. Shaw had argued that the patterns of news coverage in newspapers, television and radio were “major primary sources of national political information” because they ensured that certain issues and personalities come to dominate public attention. Manuel Castells in later times was also persuaded about the important role played by socialised communication in “framing the public mind”.

The internet and social media invested these arguments with new possibilities since socio-technical networks could carry information not just from one source to many, but from many sources to many others, creating possibilities of the monological pattern of communication that had marked legacy media being replaced by the “dialogical flow  with low cost means of communicating” (Michael J. Jensen).

Yet the blanket assumption that media can comprehensively influence electoral agendas should rightly be regarded as over-deterministic, especially in the complex Indian context with the multifarious factors that go to determine electoral outcomes. To realise this, we need only to remember the ultimate futility of new age communication techniques utilised by the Vajpayee government during the 2004 general election campaign, like SMSs sent on mobile phones urging people to vote for the BJP or the “feel good” mood that the India Shining campaign attempted to create. Mesmerizing as they were at that time, they failed to ensure that the ruling party retained power.

This cautionary lesson was forgotten during the Modi years that saw repeated election wins amidst the blare and glare of a 360-degree media spectrum. Both the 2014 and 2019 general election campaigns through which Modi crafted his majorities (282 and 303 seats, respectively), were so highly mediatised that it was easy to maintain that the prime minister’s control of legacy media and his much boosted presence on social media across platforms were central to his success. The indubitable winning formula seemed to be: Modi Plus Media Equals Victory.

What the 2024 verdict has done is to drastically upend this proposition. Modi’s media power structures have remained completely intact through this period of election campaigning. India’s legacy media was as loyal as ever to the Modi cult – the campaign saw the same Modi-centric headlines and the same saturation coverage on multiple channels of the 206 rallies he had conducted across the country. In addition, the prime minister’s personal website was buzzing with engagement; he had 98 million followers on X, a slot above Taylor Swift, two slots above Donald Trump; 90 million followers on Instagram; innumerable likes on Facebook; 26 million YouTube subscribers. So why did it appear, as this electoral season wound to its weary end and the words uttered at the doyen’s 80th interview faded away, that all this media attention was insufficient to achieve the expectations that both Modi and the media themselves had created?

Something certainly has shifted and it may be too early to fully understand the nature of this change. Three broad tentative reasons could be hazarded.

One, have we reached a saturation point in the mediatisation of the Modi cult that whatever the cult figure pronounces is rendered devoid of meaning to his audience? Consider the much cited speech he made at Banswara, Rajasthan, which he must have perceived as the ultimate Brahmastra against those he considered the natural enemies of his party. It failed spectacularly to ensure a win in this constituency. On the contrary, its candidate Mahendrajeet Singh Malviya sank like a stone in a seat which the BJP had won handsomely in both 2014 and 2019.

This defeat raises questions: Has the prime minister reached a point where the horizon of victory kept receding in several constituencies that the BJP had considered were in its bag? Was it the case that despite the divine aura he attributed to himself, the emergent god was seen to have clay feet?

Could it also be that Big Media conversations on the inevitable victory of India’s greatest prime minister had been stretched to such an extent that they had lost their elasticity like a frazzled waistband? Consider the way in which the idea of ‘Ab ki Baar, 400 paar’, which should rightly have been dismissed by the media as moonshine, or at the very least subjected to a strict reality check, was kept afloat throughout the duration of this election campaign. It began with the implausible claim made by the prime minister in late February, even before the campaign began, that the slogan had emanated “from the people”. It was interesting to observe the innumerable ways in which it was kept alive through two months of campaigning. It wound its way into prime time television shows which had titles like Sudhir Chaudhury’s ‘400 Paar Ko Le kar Modi Kitne Aashwasth?’ (How confident is Prime Minister Modi of 400 paar?) or Navika Kumar’s  ‘J.P. Nadda Speaks on “400 Paar”’. It was the favoured question repeatedly posed to the prime minister during those 80 odd interviews he conducted. As for the Exit Polls, at least three pollsters ended up giving the BJP 400 plus seats.

Modi fatigue had clearly manifested itself, but was there also fatigue over the legacy media’s standard fare? This would appear to be the case. Indicating this were the cries of the “Godi media” that accompanied  mediapersons like Anjana Om Kashyap, whenever they were in the field this time, to the extent that armed personnel had to be called in. Ordinary voters were no longer prepared to accept the political interpretations these supposedly iconic figures to interpret politics for them; they were shrewd enough to assess the credibility of what was being put out on these channels. In that sense, the Modi government by controlling Big Media through a tight leash, was actually placing it under a chokehold and potentially destroying its core public appeal. Sure, the proprietors of these concerns have raked in the moolah, and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future, but there could come a time when the law of diminishing returns sets in.

This brings us to the third factor: the search, especially among young adults, for alternative information sources. Political analyst Niranjan Sircar, in a conversation on ‘#ElectionWithIndependentMedia/Decoding the 2024 Lok Sabha’, noted that during his tours in western Uttar Pradesh this time, people seemed to have found other ways to access information, whether it was through YouTube or any other. Their effort was, of course, to gain more credible information, but it was also to access details more reflective of their own location and by extension their own lives.  Sircar’s observations are borne out by data. In 2022, YouTube reported more than 40,000 channels on its platform in India that had more than 100,000 subscribers and this figure could only have grown in an election year. According to April 2024 figures put out by Statista, India, with its 476 million subscribers, is far and away the biggest consumer of YouTube content. The US comes a distant second, with 238 million.

While the top earning YouTube dudes in this country are into tech reviews, story-telling, and standup comedy, a significant section of them are political influencers. The Global Fact 10 research report, which came out recently, revealed that while people in the West still largely trust traditional mainstream media and are distrustful of content gained digitally, in India it is the other way around. Of course, given BJP’s deep pockets and wide networks, they were the first colonisers of this space but what has also happened are a fair number of extremely popular YouTube channels which mount strong critiques of the BJP brand of politics and its chief.  The names of Dhruv Rathee and Ravish Kumar, with 20 and 11 million subscribers respectively, are of course conspicuous in this reckoning. They have become household names in the north Indian hinterland with their clear, unvarnished, de-sanskritised Hindi diction. For perhaps the first time in this campaign, we had large monitors mounted on village walls playing Rathee on loop.

The new Modi government may be constrained by its new coalition partners but it will certainly do whatever it can to rein in the incipient threat to the salience of its own narrative. Already a special multipurpose vehicle has been prepared for this purpose: the Digital India Bill, which the government claims is designed to protect users from disinformation and digital harms, could become the law of the land before long.

But this election has signaled that the people of India are far more aware of their right to freedom of speech and expression as well as credible information. This is something that a government with an authoritarian instinct would need to digest.

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Election news without the noise

There are at least 170 television news channels in the country, and on June 4 a sizeable number of them ran commentary on the counting of votes and ultimate verdict.  The question was this: How independent were their narratives?  Forget speaking truth to power, are these channels even in the business of speaking truth? One of the major “achievements” of the Modi government over its last two terms was its success in moulding media scripts to its will and counting day commentary is invariably part of this effort.

It is in that context that ‘#ElectionWithIndependentMedia/Decoding the 2024 Lok Sabha’, an experiment which began last year, needs to be viewed.  Five independent news portals – The Caravan, Scroll, The News Minute, Newslaundry and The Wire – came together to provide alternative reportage and opinion during what was the most decisive moment of the election cycle for the Indian voter: the day of the verdict.

Independence of analysis became particularly valuable in an election where there was no obvious wave; where the massive money and muscle power of the ruling party was on full display embodied in an authoritarian prime minister who conducted 206 rallies across the country; and where the mind of the voter remained as inscrutable as ever, even as psephologists of all stripes attempted to mine it. Interpreting an outcome of such gargantuan proportions, when millions of votes from 543 parliamentary constituencies across a land mass of nearly 3.3 million square kilometers are being accounted for, requires the steadiness of patient analysis.

This was why the insights that emerged from this modest, crowd-funded venture often trumped the flashy technology-driven interpretations of Big Media news channels with its speech that came with hidden manacles. As a result, some of the topics discussed during the #ElectionWithIndependentMedia programme was spectacularly absent in mainstream fare.

The top trending chatter on June 4 was the accuracy or otherwise of exit polls. While Big Media generally found it too hot a topic to handle since they were so deeply implicated in the Exit Poll mess themselves, those participating in the #ElectionWithIndependentMedia conversations had no such impediments. Their rigorous scrutiny of such polls, with one participant suggesting that they should be kept only as a game and little else, was exemplary. Similarly, the way in which the ECI overlooked one of the most shameful aspects of the election this time – the active prevention of Muslims voters from exercising their franchise – came in for a thorough dissection, while being completely ignored in the Big Media counting day exercise. Two modus operandi of voter suppression were particularly highlighted: the use of coercive power, including police lathis, to keep Muslim voters away physically, and the removal of names from electoral rolls.  Similarly, some of the most rigorous scrutiny of the shift in Dalits votes this time away from the BJP took place on the alternative platform. The emergence of the Constitution as an election issue for OBC voters – once again a unique aspect to the 2024 election – was completely parsed over by Big Media. I also did not notice any mainstream channel providing detailed assessments of the new social coalition in Uttar Pradesh between Muslims and Yadavs.

All this is not to say that an exercise like #ElectionWithIndependentMedia can compete with the speed and spectacle of big news channels. Since election verdicts have now come to imitate derby day, with all eyes on the fastest fillies, viewers will naturally gravitate to the fare offered on highly commercialised entities that treat the verdict as a horse race.  However, it could certainly be said that a programme like #ElectionWithIndependentMedia has come to occupy an important, if niche, slot in the counting day media menu. Viewers will increasingly value it for its credibility, occasional brilliance of perspective, and most profoundly its commitment to all aspects of Indian democracy including fraternity.

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Some tweets that said it all

The results of Independent reportage

Academic and author Mukul Kesavan tweeted: ‘Critically, this result vindicates the remarkable reportage and editorial independence of the rare newspapers and online news platforms that held this predatory regime to account, among them the Caravan, Scroll, the Wire, the Deccan Herald and the Telegraph, Calcutta.’

Another tweet, this time from the founder-editor of the News Minute, Dhanya Rajendran: ‘Journalists who actively promoted Hindu-Muslim divide, show after show, article after article, may suddenly discover secularism and more things now. Good. But one should never forget what they did, because they will go back to their old ways at the first opportunity.’

The Wire interviews

Wire viewer, Dipankar Haldar wrote in: ‘I watch your channel many a time.  I have watched the interviews conducted by Karan Thapar. Besides his diction and dialect, his take on current affairs and the manner in which he uses his knowledge to put probing questions to his subjects are quite interesting to me.

‘But I would like to mention that your other anchor, Arfa Khanun Sherwani, tends to take a polarized view on politics. We Indians have one thing in common — lack of harmony. Even after 75 years we divide the nation on many lines, religion being one of them. As a student of law and economics, I believe this divide should have been restricted to that between Haves and Have-nots.  In any field you can see prosperity and disparity. Be it for Hindus or Muslims, or for that matter any religion. Here, the sun shines equally for all but the heat seems to be on the poor. In this context, the programmes conducted by Sherwani only projects a specific community being at the receiving end. As a matter of fact Muslims are facing the same issues and problems faced by other communities as well.

‘In Bengal, Kazi Nazrul Islam is as revered name as Rabindranath Tagore, in the West we respect Sahir Ludhianvi as much as we do to Neeraj.  Again the sun shines equally on all in this aspect too. All I am requesting is moderation in thought process and reporting for a just cause.’

Write to ombudsperson@cms.thewire.in

The BJP Underestimated the Punching Power of a New Generation of Politicians in the 2024 Elections

Most of them are dynasts, but they have a finger on the pulse of the younger voter.

Kolkata: The 2024 Lok Sabha election was a contest between the 73-year-old strongman of the Bharatiya Janata Party and a new generation of leaders, born and bred in political families, as familiar with the privileges that come with power and equally aware of how cutthroat the world of politics is in reality. They came up from behind, were sneered at by Narendra Modi as the “shehzade”, mollycoddled scions of political dynasties who did not earn their role as leaders but simply inherited it regardless of merit.

The old order will not yield place gracefully to the new, but Modi and the BJP have been warned that a younger generation of leaders are taking over, having been forged in the same fire. Underestimating the punching power of the new generation, siblings Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra, Akhilesh Yadav, Tejashwi Yadav, M.K. Stalin, Abhishek Banerjee, Uddhav Thackeray and son Aaditya Thackeray, who led their respective parties and worked together to break the stranglehold of the BJP and its larger-than-life divinely blessed leader, Modi, was an expensive and difficult to recover from mistake.

The error that Modi and the party he leads was misreading the pulse of the people. Ensconced in his position at the top, cocooned in the aura of being the most popular Prime Minister, Modi is out of touch with the reality that concerns 60 crore of the total 140 odd crore population, who are in their prime, between 18 years and 35 years. As the head of the government, Modi must know that his policies, especially the four-year contractual Agnipath recruitment scheme for the defence services has angered the younger generation, who constitute over 25% of the voters in this election. He must also know that a significant share of this generation is not enchanted with his Hindutva politics of religious polarisation and hyper nationalism. As he must know that his ideas about women as domesticated servitors, happy with his handouts, is not the aspiration of the younger women, who are educated and angry about the quality of employment on offer.

Also read: Survey Finds Deep Economic Discontent, Job Pessimism; 52% Say Modi’s Policies Favour ‘Big Business’

In contrast, the new generation that led their parties are backed up by a slew of others, like Sachin Pilot in Rajasthan, Deepender Singh Hooda in Haryana, Gaurav Gogoi and Sushmita Dev in Assam, Revanth Reddy, now chief minister of Telengana, Supriya Sule in Maharashtra, Misa Bharati and Rohini Acharya Yadav in Bihar, who are far more clued in on what makes the under 35-year Indian tick.  The list is much longer because the younger generation of leaders in the opposition to the BJP is drawn from a large pool of political families deeply invested in their specific territories.

These leaders and the scions of founding families speak in the idiom that the people understand, because they are constantly mingling with the masses. The Bharat Jodo Yatra‘s 4,080-kilometres trek changed popular perception about Rahul Gandhi as much as it changed his understanding of what India is. From the disrespectful ‘Pappu’ nickname bequeathed on him by the BJP and its supportive trolls, Gandhi became a mass leader, who is obviously so popular that youth broke barricades to get near him at the Phulpur rally as the video that went viral showed. The consequence was the Congress win in the Allahabad constituency, even though the Samajwadi Party lost in Phulpur by a margin of 4,000-odd votes to the BJP.

And then there are other scions of founding families, who are with the National Democratic Alliance as partners. Not all of them are relatively young. For starters, there is Chandrababu Naidu of the Telugu Desam Party, who took over from his father-in-law NTR, Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao, the founder of the party. As Modi will discover, Naidu with the 17 MPs of the TDP is a formidable force, who will bargain hard and has the power to destabilise Modi, who not only heads a party in a minority but has the difficult task of leading a coalition from a position of weakness.

On its own, the BJP’s 240 seats do not automatically qualify Modi to be Prime Minister, a position he obviously believes he alone is fit to fill. It does put him at the mercy of a host of scions of political dynasties, including the Janata Dal (Secular), Rashtriya Lok Dal, Apna Dal (Soneylal), Lok Janashakti Party (Ram Vilas), Nationalist Congress Party led by Ajit Pawar. And then there are scions of political families that belong to the BJP – Karan Bhushan Singh, son of the notorious Brij Bhushan Singh who is accused of sexual abuse by women’s wrestlers, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Jitin Prasad, Ashok Chavan, Piyush Goyal, Dharmendra Pradhan, Anurag Thakur, Suvendu Adhikari to name some.

The difference between the new generation of party leaders from the opposition and within the BJP and the old guard protecting Modi from his misdemeanours is a sense of responsibility. The Gandhi siblings, Akhilesh Yadav, Tejashwi Yadav, M.K. Stalin, Uddhav and Aaditya Thackeray from the opposition and H.D. Kumaraswamy, Anupriya Patel, Chirag Paswan, Jayant Chaudhari, or even the Chauthalas have that one factor in common, apart from lineage, and that is the responsibility that comes with being descendants of the founding families of the parties to which they belong.

They know that they must lead in a way that their party’s candidates in all the three tiers of India’s elected democracy from the panchayats to the Lok Sabha win. It does not make the partner parties of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance natural allies of the coalition parties of the National Democratic Alliance, but it does set them apart from the BJP’s in-group of leaders from political families. At the end of day, leaders from founding families have to do what is best for the party or lose their leadership positions.

Also read: India Alliance and NDA Coalition Partners Must Push for Restoring Independence of Institutions

Mr Modi may not think he ought to retire at 75 years, but he does belong to a generation that 60 crore Indians would generally think is populated by their grandparents. In contrast, INDIA bloc’s most visible leaders are obviously younger, though there are some like Uddhav Thackeray, who is in his 60s. These leaders talk about issues that concern the younger voters from the 18 years to 29 years age cohort, who constitute about one fourth of the electorate. They talk about unemployment and the lack of opportunities for employment, inflation and the cost of living crisis, they talk about short term and long term remedies to these problems.

The Congress manifesto lists what an INDIA bloc government would do for younger and older Indians, a prescription that regional parties have endorsed in their separate campaigns. Regional parties and the Congress, which is now in power in Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, and Telangana, are far more connected to the people, dealing as they do with the day-to-day needs and problems of the constituents and their families. The difference with the BJP and these opposition ruling parties is the command and control structure within which BJP chief ministers are expected to operate so that the heat is taken off Modi and the accumulated anti-incumbency over 10 years of his regime.

Dangling the prospect of a Viksit Bharat, a fully developed India that is number three in the world listing of largest economies by 2047, in front of a currently jobless 19-year-old, who would be 42 years old by then, does not endear Modi. There is, however, a perception that younger voters are uncomfortable with the paternalist, patriarchal style of Modi and his obsession with faux ancient rituals and in his meditations.

The generation gap is probably surfacing and will become more evident in the next round of state elections, starting with Haryana and Maharashtra in 2024 and then Assam, Bihar, Kerala, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and others through 2025 and 2026. The test of the generational gap will play out in how Modi handles the state assembly elections this year and in the next year as he comes up against the younger generation of leaders, blooded in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and hungering for more action.

In Haryana, Deepender Hooda, and in Maharashtra, the Thackerays, Sule, and a younger crop of Congress leaders are readying to join the battle with not only the local BJP leadership – obviously shaken by the Lok Sabha results as Devendra Fadnavis’s resignation offer indicates –but also with Modi. The state assembly contests will test Modi’s stamina and his political skills as he navigates between electioneering, keeping his coalition going, a far stronger opposition in Parliament, and running a government where not all the ministers are fully in his control.

Having worked together to make a breakthrough for their parties in this Lok Sabha election, it will be up to the younger generation of leaders to continue to pool strengths and reduce their weaknesses through coordinating their strategies in the states. The younger generation of leaders – Rahul Gandhi, Akhilesh Yadav, Tejashwi Yadav, the Thackerays, Sule – know through personal experience the cost of going it alone, of broken deals and failed alliances. Unlike their elders, these leaders do not have the same degree of uneasiness, suspicion, and hostility to once rivals-now allies. The Congress is not the behemoth it once was; Rahul Gandhi is more practical and less querulous than the older generation of Congress leaders; he certainly seems to think the Congress is less entitled.

Up against a new generation that is making new rules and changing the way the game is played, the BJP has to think fast and think differently. The question for the party is, is Modi the man who can adjust to the emerging reality and do things differently, or is he so enamoured of the cult that he has crafted about himself as the man who knows best what is good for the nation that he is a liability that the BJP and its parent Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh need to discard?

There is another problem with the equation between the BJP-RSS that keeps Modi on top: his dependence on the extreme right-wing of his party, the so-called bhakts, who have been built up as the “core” of the party’s support by him and his strategy partner, Amit Shah. Given the size, diversity, and differences of India –= socially, politically, and economically – a single-track Hindutva agenda is a liability. Not all Hindus are moved by the spiel about vote jihad, mangalsutras, madrassas, and mafia, and do not believe that the opposition, including the Congress, are stooges of the defunct Muslim League or anti-nationals, urban naxals, and members of the tukde-tukde gang.

Also read: Fish, Mutton Campaign for Modi, Only to Duck Mention of His 10-Year Record?

The popular sovereign in this election has delivered a message, because it stopped short of delivering a mandate. The middle ground where the overwhelming majority of the median voter lives has to be retaken, expanded, and defended from a religious extreme right invasion that almost succeeded in driving out the parties that are secular, liberal, democratic, committed to social, political, and economic justice.

The young generation of leaders represent a new era of middle ground or what used to be called centrist politics, bookended by the Left on one side and the Right on the other. They have learnt to work together without the distrust that marked the relationship of the earlier generation of leaders from the same parties. The retaking of the middle ground is a task that needs to be completed. Modi is not the leader who can steer the BJP to withstand this new war.

Shikha Mukherjee is a Kolkata-based commentator.

India’s New Government Faces Job Creation Challenge

Jobs are scant, and more than 90% of the workforce is in the informal economy.

The election results have proven that “Modi’s guarantee” is no longer enough. The people of India want stronger policies on employment and agriculture.

For the past decade, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) enjoyed an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s parliament. This time, it has fallen well short of that mark. Its diminished numbers likely reflect its failure over its previous terms to address the economic distress of a sizable section of society, particularly young people and farmers.

The next government in New Delhi must change its approach towards increasing employment, especially youth employment, by making direct interventions. The most effective starting point for such a process would be adopting a National Employment Policy that was on the fringes of policy discussions when the Congress-led government was in power before 2014. By 2022, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government said in parliament that there was no plan to develop a National Employment Policy.

The most enduring feature of India’s labour market is the high level of informality. More than 90% of the workforce is in the informal economy. It needs a holistic look to allow everyone to participate in talks on concrete measures that can be taken to create jobs and provide social security to workers. Alongside this, the government must recalibrate the incentives extended to the private sector, linking these to their ability to create jobs.

Possibly the most troubling aspects of the NDA government’s economic policies pertain to its dealing with the farm sector.

Agriculture remains the mainstay of India’s workforce. According to the Economic Survey of 2022-23, 65% (2021 data) of the country’s population lives in rural areas and 47% of the population depends on agriculture for livelihood. There is a lack of adequate income for them, which is a major problem for rural workers.

In 2020, the government brought in three controversial farm laws, which would have facilitated the entry of large traders for procuring agricultural produce. This was an attempt to replace government agencies that have been procuring all the major commodities from farmers since the 1960s. Though farmers’ agitations forced the government to withdraw the legislation, the farmers’ demands to address the problems faced by India’s crisis-ridden agriculture were never given any attention.

One of the most intriguing anomalies of Indian policy-making during the past 80 years has been the lack of political will to formulate a National Agricultural Policy. It is ironic that, while the United States and the members of the European Union have been adopting the Farm Act and the Common Agricultural Policy respectively, every Indian government since independence has avoided enacting a domestic equivalent, even though agriculture employs a very small share of the workforce in the US and Europe.

Doing so would ensure that everyone, including the farmers’ organisations and the state governments, is fully involved in making policies in agriculture. A comprehensive policy aimed at improving the viability of Indian agriculture, improving the lives and livelihoods of 47% of the country’s workforce, can provide the impulses necessary for sustaining high and inclusive growth.

India has a relatively young population. The country can trigger a strong development cycle by engaging young people in its workforce. The benefits of the demographic dividend, which has long been discussed in the context of the Indian economy, can then be reaped.

But this demographic dividend seems a long way off given the high levels of youth unemployment. Over the past few years, and particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic, this has been a major pain point for the Indian economy.

While the official statistics show high levels of growth, this growth has not been employment augmenting to the desirable extent.

India’s labour market shows two disquieting features. Firstly, official statistics show that the country’s young people (15-29 years) have consistently higher unemployment rates than the overall workforce. Secondly, there are high levels of gender inequity and the employment opportunities available for women have not shown any signs of improvement.

The youth unemployment rate during the first quarter of 2024 was 17%, two and a half times higher than the corresponding figure for the working-age population. The unemployment rate for young female workers was even higher at 22.7%. These figures suggest that India is wasting a large share of its labour force and that the possibility of realising the demographic dividend is extremely bleak.

The NDA government’s response to addressing the stress in the labour market has usually been to encourage the private sector to increase investment in the hope that this would create jobs. In recent years, it has done so by providing a slew of fiscal and other incentives.

In 2019, the government cut corporation tax substantially, arguing that this would stimulate private investment and hence create jobs. This cost the government Rs 1 trillion in taxes the following financial year.

After the COVID downturn, the government pumped additional liquidity into the economy, expecting that this would enable the private sector to increase investments and jobs. It also launched a Production-Linked Incentive Scheme to encourage private sector investment in 14 key manufacturing sectors.

The continued high levels of youth unemployment indicate that these measures haven’t worked.

Instead of addressing these problems, the overwhelming focus of the NDA government was to create a “dole economy” by extending freebies to the distressed, an approach which it had itself criticised a few years ago. The election manifesto of the BJP, titled “Modi ki Guarantee” (Modi’s guarantee) was essentially a “guarantee” to continue with these freebies, the most significant of which was to extend free ration to more than 800 million people, covering nearly 60% of the population.

The election verdict indicates that Indian voters are not satisfied with handouts alone. They are looking for what the International Labour Organization calls “decent work”, implying productive work for women and men in conditions of freedom, equity, security, and dignity.

Biswajit Dhar is a Distinguished Professor at the Council for Social Development and a retired Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University

Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

BJP’s Internal Rumblings, Naidu-Nitish Pushback on UCC, Agniveer and ‘Special Status’ Challenge Modi

Narendra Modi will have to tackle not only wily allies but growing anguish against BJP’s centralisation by the Modi-Shah duo.

New Delhi: Only a couple of days have passed since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) fell short of a majority, but the churn in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has already begun. The incumbent Narendra Modi government will have to be dictated by coalition concerns, especially with two of its biggest allies Nitish Kumar and N. Chandrababu Naidu, well-known to be hard bargainers.

Narendra Modi will likely be sworn in on June 9, 2024 evening. Ahead of that, hectic consultations with both Naidu and Nitish already seem to be bogging down the BJP. Speculations have been rife that the Naidu-led Telugu Desam Party has demanded significant ministries and the position of the Lok Sabha speaker. Nitish Kumar, apart from making similar demands, is also looking to get some of the Modi government’s decisions reversed.

JD(U)’s senior leader told reporters that the party would like the NDA government to reconsider the contentious Agnipath scheme, which recruits soldiers in the armed forces for a period of only four years without much pension benefits. The senior leader said that there was great resentment against the scheme in north India, where the young get recruited in the armed forces in hordes. The scheme came across as evidently unpopular during the election campaign, something that only amplified noises against the Modi government.

Also read: Agnipath Is a Marketing Trick in Which Job Destruction Is Being Sold as Job Creation

He also mooted the idea of a pan-India caste census and said such an exercise is the call of the time, even as he said his party’s support to the BJP is “unconditional”. More importantly, he reiterated his party’s stance that it was opposed to the proposed Uniform Civil Code (UCC), but added that a resolution regarding it should be taken after consultations with other parties.

It is well-known that the BJP has been in the mood to implement the UCC; one of its state governments in Uttarakhand has already passed a Bill on it in the assembly. At the same time, the BJP has been reluctant to take an unequivocal stand on the caste census. In Bihar, the party had supported the caste survey conducted by the Nitish Kumar government when he was a part of the INDIA bloc, but took strong jibes against it at the national level, accusing the opposition forces of dividing the country along caste lines.

Nitish’s immediate rival, Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav, has already started to press Nitish on the issue of a special status for Bihar. “NDA has numbers but we want the government which will be formed to take care of Bihar and ensure that it gets the special status. It is a good opportunity for Nitish Kumar if he is the kingmaker. He should ensure that Bihar gets the special status and conduct a caste-based census in the entire country,” Yadav told reporters this morning.

For Modi, who is used to taking decisions unilaterally ever since he became the chief minister of Gujarat in 2001, the coalition dynamics will not come easy. Although he has been quite adept at making pre-poll alliances, roping in socially-influential leaders and engineering defections, it will be the first time when he will also have to actually face allies who are unpredictable and command a stature of their own.

Also read: As Naidu, Nitish Hold Key to Third Term, a Look at NDA’s ‘Use, Weaken, Throw’ Strategy for Allies

Both Nitish and Naidu have been demanding a special status for their states 0 Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, as earlier mentioned.

Naidu had exited the NDA in 2018 over reluctance of the Centre to grant such a package to the Telugu-speaking state. The veteran Nitish, too, is well-versed in making the best use of a coalition government, and is also known to somersault if his demands are not met. Likewise, he is reported to have demanded ministries like the Railways, rural development, and Jal Shakti.

On the other hand, Naidu has consistently shown interest in ministries related to infrastructure development, a field that has been a consistent focus throughout his political career. He is reported to have requested for a special package on building Amravati as Andhra Pradesh’s capital – a decision that was reversed by the outgoing Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy government.

Although Modi, in his speech after the election results came out, spoke about taking “bold decisions” in his third term, he will have to keep his allies happy and take care of not rubbing them the wrong way.

He may not just have to appease both his small and big allies, all of whom will look to make the best of the situation and get their demands met, but will also have to attend to the brooding resentment against over-centralisation of the BJP within his own rank and file.

A large number of BJP leaders have already begun to question the way the Modi-Amit Shah duo have taken control of the party, putting at stake its long history of democratic functioning. Although most of such remarks are being made off-the-record, they are only likely to grow.

For instance, a Uttar Pradesh-based mid-level BJP leader told this correspondent that the parliamentary board of the party, which was once powerful, had become an approval forum for all Modi-Shah duo’s decisions. The leader also said that the drubbing that the BJP received was partly because of the bureaucratic, as opposed to cadre-driven, campaign in the state. He added that many like him were not given any role in the campaign, although they have been associated with the party for over three decades. Rather, he said, a large chunk of responsibilities were given to government officials and business contractors who are seen as close to the top leaders.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Union home minster Amit Shah. Photo: Flickr/CC BY 2.0

Possibly fearing such internal dissensions snowballing into an uncontrollable monster, Modi swiftly staked a claim to lead the next government. He quickly resigned from the post of prime minister, as he was required to do so after losing the majority, and conducted an NDA meeting to get himself elected as the leader of the alliance. He will also be presiding over the BJP’s parliamentary party on June 7, 2024 to assert his supremacy.

The hurried nature of the moves came across as acts of nervousness more than his trademark surefootedness.

Even as Modi is ambushed by different problems to handle, all at once, the BJP will also likely begin to discuss J.P. Nadda’s replacement as the party president. Among the frontrunners, sources said, are former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, former Union health minister Mansukh Mandaviya, and BJP’s Gujarat state president C.R. Patil. Modi is likely to prefer the Gujarat-based Mandaviya or Patil over Chouhan, given the love-hate relationship he has had with the former Madhya Pradesh chief minister.

However, Patil is said to be fighting a failing vision, while Mandaviya may not be a tall enough leader in the party to assume the role of the party’s chief. Nadda, who was a Modi acolyte and did not command much power among the party ranks, was chosen as a figurehead when the Modi-Shah duo took all the decisions. Nadda oversaw BJP’s defeats in his home state Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka first, and could not steer the party to a majority in the Lok Sabha. In such circumstances, the party will discuss whether to have another figurative head or a leader who can really steer the BJP ship. In the case of the latter, Chouhan, a leader in his own right, could get the support of senior leaders of the party.

The coalition dynamics have already begun to take shape, and it is likely to only complicate dynamics between the allies in the future.

Moreover, the seniors in the BJP (think Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Vasundhara Raje Scindia) who have remained in his shadows for over a decade may also be itching to democratise the party once again. According to some insiders, Shah may be the likely one to take the first bullet, as is evident from the widespread and visible anger among ‘upper’ caste BJP functionaries in Uttar Pradesh – the state that scripted Modi’s decline.

What appears to be restricting Modi from taking “bold decisions”, which have more often been disastrous for the economy (recall demonetisation and GST), the coalition will also readily put a system of checks and balances in the next Modi government. Or, perhaps, one needs to start calling it an NDA government, like Modi himself did in his first speech after the results.

 

June 4 Marks the End of Modi’s Inevitability: A New Era in Indian Politics Emerges

A parliament with no one party with a clear majority also means a return to the days of more parliamentary influence on governance, where cross coalition consensus has to be built for new legislation.

It’s difficult to explain to outsiders what June 4 means to so many Indians. While it is certainly likely that Narendra Modi will form the new government, it will be a coalition. This includes partners like Chandrababu Naidu who quit the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance in 2004 (ironically for their failure to curb Modi after the 2002 Gujarat pogrom) and again in 2018 (after disagreements with Modi), and Nitish Kumar, who has developed political flip flopping into an art form. It will be Modi’s first brush with helming a meaningful coalition, without the absolute majority that has hitherto backed his ‘my way or the highway’ style of alliance management.

A parliament with no one party with a clear majority also means a return to the days of more parliamentary influence on governance, where cross coalition consensus has to be built for new legislation. Again, this is something the BJP, which has treated parliament as a rubber stamp for the last decade, will have to get used to.

And yet, beyond any of these gains, what drives sentiment today is that the idea of the inevitability of Modi has been shattered.

“Aayega to Modi hi” (“Modi is inevitable”) is a chant often used by his supporters as a cry of power. To tell his opponents that their resistance to his ideas is futile, and even dangerous. That no matter what they do or say, a Modi government is inevitable. And it is this inevitability of Modi that has directed political funding, executive actions, and to an extent, judicial decisions, in India for the last decade. It has also driven political analysis and the public discourse, where bigots have felt confident to drop their masks and openly dehumanise minorities, secure in the knowledge that Modi would forever have their backs. That has changed. “Aayega toh Modi hi” is ill-suited for limping into power propped up by a capricious Nitish and a self-interest-driven Chandrababu Naidu.

A handicapped opposition, with frozen bank accounts, threatened with judicial and executive action, and with two chief ministers in jail, fought with both hands tied behind their backs and shattered the illusion. That cannot be remade. Modi, like every other Indian politician, is now going to be treated as one of many. And to one of many politicians, the Indian electorate is a hard taskmaster.

But the impact of this election goes far beyond Modi or even Hindutva as a whole. It challenges the fundamental neoliberal assumptions that have dominated Indian political thought since liberalisation in 1991. Like a mantra, repeated blindly by believers, “reform” for the last three decades, has meant reduced regulation and increased privatisation, with little or no analysis on the actual impact of such moves. Development has meant hijacking natural resources and handing them over to favoured capitalists to be ruthlessly exploited. It has meant the bypassing of environmental regulation and mindless culling of the green cover of the country in the name of infrastructure building.

For the marginalised, inequality was assumed not to be a legitimate concern (“Should everyone be poor?” Modi disparagingly dismissed the question recently). Bare minimum poverty alleviation was all that mattered. Growth discussions were divorced from the creation of jobs, or larger planning for the transition of a large rural population out of agriculture and into other occupations.

The Congress certainly shares some of the blame for this, for it is often their own talking points from the 1990s and the 2000s that have been taken forward by the BJP to their cruel (albeit logical) extreme. For the first time in 30 years though, the Congress seems to have changed track. Under the leadership of the veteran politician, Mallikarjun Kharge, who is Dalit, backed by Rahul Gandhi’s own experiences from his Bharat Jodo Yatra, his 4,080 km on-foot trek across the length and breadth of India, the Congress seems to have finally seen the limitations of their own post liberalisation imagination of India.

Their 2024 manifesto, or “Nyay Patra” allowed the opposition, for the first time in decade, to set the discursive agenda of this election. Their highlighting of inequality and the lack of backward caste representation in the country posed questions that the BJP found impossible to counter without resorting to communal dogwhistles. Consequently, all prior talk by the BJP of development and progress was sidelined in favour of a near continuous targeting of Indian Muslims. Led by Modi himself, the party mined the depths of right wing influencer talking points (Kunal Purohit offers an excellent analysis of these talking points here) to fashion their electoral campaign. From likening Muslim voting to “jihad”, to casting Muslim birth rates as demographic threats and consistently and repeatedly telling their voters that the opposition would seize their assets and give them away to Indian Muslims, all overseen by an indulgent election commission, the attempt to regain narrative control was both desperate and particularly communally vicious. And yet, it failed. In Banswara, for example, where Modi spoke of Muslims as “infiltrators” to whom the Congress would give property, the BJP lost by over 240,000 votes.

The supporters of the INDIA coalition are well aware that they have not crossed the 272 seat mark that would let them form the government, and end some of the pressing injustices enforced by the Modi government. And yet, June 4 offers a beginning. A chance for politics in the country to move away from mass religious radicalisation and violence and to return to addressing inequality and the needs of the marginalised. It must be built on, and looking at the mood of the electorate, it will be. In a country where the 1% hold 40% of the wealth, with extreme levels of youth unemployment and levels of inequality not seen since the days of colonialism, and frightening anti minority violence, it is a beginning that is very very welcome.

This article was originally published on the author’s blog on Substack, Tattva.

Varanasi Lok Sabha: Congress’s Ajay Rai Banks on ‘Local vs. Outsider’ Factor Against Narendra Modi

Rai’s strategy of projecting himself as the ‘son of the soil’ and dismissing Modi as a “pravasi” (migrant) or “bahri” (outsider) is not new. In this election, Rai has intensified his nativist card against Modi to new levels.

New Delhi: Targetting Narendra Modi’s Gujarati background, Ajay Rai, the Congress candidate in the high-profile constituency of Varanasi, is banking on the ‘local versus outsider’ factor against the prime minister in the 2024 elections.

Rai’s strategy of projecting himself as the ‘son of the soil’ and dismissing Modi as a “pravasi” (migrant) or “bahri” (outsider) is not new. He has fought two Lok Sabha elections in Varanasi against Modi with a similar narrative, in 2014 and 2019, losing miserably on both occasions.

However, in this election, Rai has intensified his nativist card against Modi to new levels.

On May 28, speaking at a rally, Rai, in a laced attack on Modi, described him as a “thug” from Gujarat. Rai didn’t stop there. He even accused Modi of facilitating the takeover of the land of local farmers at petty rates by Gujarati businessmen, describing them as “Gujarati thugs.” While English language dictionaries describe ‘thug’ as a criminal or thief, in colloquial Bhojpuri, in which Rai was speaking, its nearest translation is to a ‘cheat’ or a ‘swindler’.

“The people here trusted a ‘bahri thug’ (thug from outside), who has continuously cheated you. He has fooled the public and acquired land from farmers for ‘aune paune daam’ (for a song) and sold it to Gujarati businessmen,” said Rai.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav were on stage when Rai launched this attack against Modi.

A former five-time MLA from a seat in Varanasi, Rai started his career with the student wing of the Hindu nationalist outfit and the BJP’s parent organisation, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The Congress appointed him as its state president in Uttar Pradesh last year. Rai is a Bhumihar and enjoys a support base among a cross-section of voters.

Rai referred to the police lathi-charge on farmers in May 2023 when they had gathered to protest against the acquisition of land for a new township project, Transport Nagar. According to the Varanasi Development Authority, the project would encompass four villages, Karandandi, Milkichak, Sarai Mohan, and Bairawan. In its first phase, the project would “transform” around 48 hectares of land.

Asking farmers to vote against Modi, Rai said it was “time to take revenge.”

“On June 1, send him back to Gujarat or else they will capture all your land. Nothing will remain with you. They will take everything and sell it to Gujarati thugs,” said Rai. The Congress candidate then said that “entire Varanasi” was worried that “Gujarati log (people)” were coming to the city and purchasing land belonging to farmers at petty rates. He also alleged that after Modi came to power and was elected from Varanasi, Gujaratis won all the contracts given to build roads and ports in the constituency. “Did anyone from Varanasi or UP get this contract? These Gujaratis have taken away all our things,” said Rai.

Speaking after Rai, SP chief Yadav also seemed to back this narrative as he took a dig at the Gujarati background of the BJP’s top two – Modi and Amit Shah. “Do you know what G-20 means,” he asked the people, referring to the G-20 Summit hosted by India, including Varanasi, last year. “G-20 means ‘Do Gujarat ke, Baki BJP ke zero’,” said Yadav.

He also raised the issue of police lathi-charge on farmers and promised that if the INDIA alliance was voted to power, they would not snatch their land but even if it was necessary to acquire their land, the government would do so after increasing the circle rates to the market rate.

What’s notable is that in the past elections, Yadav also used to play up the Gujarati card to target Modi. However, after realising that such a move may backfire in UP, where Modi’s Hindu nationalist credentials weigh over his linguistic background, Yadav and his party have toned down that line of attack.

Unlike Maharashtra, where the nativist Marathi manoos versus the Hindi-speaking migrants or Gujaratis is politically divisive, in the north Indian state, the opposition’s attempts to discredit Modi due to his Gujarati background have met with little success. Large populations of the state, especially young men from Purvanchal, where Varanasi is located, work as migrants in big cities and towns in Gujarat, Maharashtra, and other relatively more prosperous states.

Varanasi, though boasting an undeniably authentic flavour of Hindi and Hindu culturalism, is also home to several linguistic minorities, including people originally from Maharashtra, Gujarat, West Bengal, and Andhra Pradesh. Varanasi has also elected a Gujarat-origin man as mayor in the past and Shyam Dev Rai Chaudhari, a Bengali, was elected MLA from Varanasi South, the hub of cultural activities in the city, seven times in a row from 1989.

From 2014, Modi has, on several occasions, tried to affirm his relationship with Varanasi. If in 2014, he said he came to Varanasi on the call of “Ma Ganga,” in 2017, responding to Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra’s jibe against him that UP did not need an “outsider” to develop it, Modi described him as the “adopted son” of UP. Yadav’s wife Dimple Yadav had in 2017 tried to dismiss Modi as an outsider by quoting a line from a famous song from an Amitabh Bachchan movie – ‘Mere angane mein tumhara kya kaam hain‘.

When he was chief minister of UP, Yadav used to target Modi’s ‘Gujarat Model.’ In 2017, during the state elections, which he eventually lost, he caught Modi’s attention after he requested Bachchan to stop doing campaign ads for “Gujarat’s donkeys.” Yadav’s double entendre was inspired by Bachchan featuring in a Gujarat government tourism advertisement on a ‘Wild Ass Sanctuary.’ Yadav also landed himself in hot water in 2017 when he sardonically asked if, while states like UP supplied the country with jawans, anyone from Gujarat had ever laid down his or her life for the armed forces.

While Modi has wide acceptance in western and northern India, he still strives to build a bond with UP, which has elected him as MP twice in a row. In his speeches, he often talks about the relationship between Mathura and Dwarka, bound by the Hindu deity Lord Krishna. If Gujarat was his birthplace, UP has adopted him just as Krishna, though born in UP, considered Gujarat his ‘karma bhoomi.’

At a recent rally in Varanasi, Modi underlined that this was his first nomination for an election in the constituency without his mother. “Ma Ganga is my mother now. Ma Ganga has adopted me,” he exclaimed.

Modi’s campaign in Varanasi has also been about emphasising the fact that the constituency was electing a prime minister but an ordinary MP. This selling card has worked well for Modi since 2014.

But Rahul Gandhi thinks this might not be the case this time.

“This is a fight between Modi and Ajay Rai, not between the prime ministerial candidate Modi and Ajay Rai. Modi will not be prime minister, this is my guarantee. Ajay Rai can win this fight,” said Gandhi on May 28.

In 2019, Modi defeated Rai by over 5.20 lakh votes. This time Rai has the consolation of the SP’s support to the Congress. However, the result seems like a foregone conclusion, given the connection Modi has built with the constituency since 2014 and the mere fact that he is prime minister. Barring 2004, the BJP has regularly won Varanasi since 1991, though with a few hiccups.

Publishing Voter Turnout Numbers: Lack of Statutory Mandate or an Absence of Will?

The Supreme Court’s refusal to issue directions has allowed the ECI to get away, for now, by offering multiple excuses, one of which is that it has no statutory mandate to make Form 17C publicly accessible.

The Supreme Court’s recent refusal to direct the publication of Form 17C data, which every Presiding Officer fills out as the record of the number of people who cast their vote at the allotted polling stations, is along expected lines. The apex court rarely interferes in an electoral process that is already underway, as a measure of respect for the powers and jurisdiction of another constitutional authority, namely the Election Commission of India (ECI). Any dispute with regard to any election to any public office under the Constitution is required to be dealt after the completion of the process within the terms of Article 323B, under Part XIVA of the Constitution, in the form of an election petition filed before the high court having territorial jurisdiction (the high court becomes the Election Tribunal for that case).

Readers will recall, this segment of the Constitution was inserted through the 42nd amendment which was tabled, debated, and passed in Parliament, ratified by a majority of State Legislative Assemblies, assented to by the President of India and published in the Official Gazette – all done and dusted in less than 10 days. Granville Austin’s monumental tome: Working a Democratic Constitution, amongst others, provides a ringside commentary of the haste with which these and several other changes to the Constitution were forced down the throats of the citizenry at a time when their fundamental right stood suspended because of the national emergency declared by the Indira Gandhi-led government. Then, the Supreme Court by a 4:1 majority was also not willing to issue any direction to the Executive to restore the fundamental right to life liberty which was being violated by the police day after day, as they continued to arrest Opposition leaders and activists in a bid to put all political dissidence behind bars.

With the deepest respect to its majesty and wisdom, it must be said, by refusing to direct the disclosure of the contents of Form 17C, the Hon’ble Supreme Court has failed to uphold another fundamental right, namely, the voter’s right to know, 47 years after the infamous ADM Jabalpur vs Shivkant Shukla judgment mentioned above.

The greatest irony is that earlier this year, another bench of the same court had upheld the fundamental right of citizens to know all information about the electoral bonds through which thousands of crores of rupees were funnelled into the coffers of political parties with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party garnering the lion’s share. Nevertheless, 96.88 crore voters will not be able to find out how many of them actually voted until the apex court decides that they should know. The ECI has stubbornly refused to publish anything more than polling percentages, so far.

The second biggest irony is that such percentages (as a proportion of the total number of electors who are formally registered in the voter lists) cannot be calculated without referring to the absolute numbers of men, women, and transpersons, who voted in each of the 10.48 lakh polling stations across the country. This data contained in Part-1 of Form 17C, the ECI is already collating through feeds received on its mobile app- ENCORE, which is not open to the citizenry to access – a fact which the Supreme Court, unfortunately, did not take into account during the hearing.

If the ECI were to appear in school tests and exams, like I did more than four decades ago, any failure to show step by step, how the solution to a mathematical problem was arrived at, in the answer script, would earn it zero marks even if the answer was correct. The teacher would suspect that the answer might have been copied from someone else or from some hidden source. The disclosure of absolute voter turnout figures will work like an antidote to similar suspicions about possible fudging of data – which the apex court unfortunately failed to appreciate.

Form 17C data has unfortunately been allowed to slip down a blackhole. Blackholes have discernible event horizons, but we must remain satisfied with percentages until the court decides on the main petition filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms. That petition has languished for more than four years and the end is nowhere in sight.

The top court’s refusal to issue directions has allowed the ECI to get away, for now, by offering multiple excuses, one of which is that it has no statutory mandate to make Form 17C publicly accessible. This reasoning is not only annoyingly lame but also contrary to what is mentioned in the election laws. Rule 93(2) of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, empowers the ECI to permit the inspection of all papers relating to elections which do not require to be kept confidential (in order to protect the secrecy of the vote) by any person, subject to such conditions and fees as it may direct. Even form 17C data can be accessed in this manner.

Rather than wait for people to make formal requests, is it not a sensible step to make all this information proactively available to people through the ECI’s website? According to eminent persons who have served on the ECI, voter turnout data in terms of absolute numbers were published along with percentages always until 2019. However, five years down the line, the ECI has discovered the absence of a statutory mandate as a hindrance to continue with this good old practice of transparency.

Also read: Why Election Commission Not Giving Absolute Voter Numbers Matters

The ECI’s website contains a wealth of materials relating to all kinds of elections that it is mandated to conduct – be it other kinds of forms and formats which voters and candidates may use, statistical data about final results in parliamentary and state assembly elections, handbooks, manuals, circulars, guidelines and press releases to name a few. A quick review of such categories of information shows they are being disclosed without any express statutory mandate.

For example, where is the statutory mandate to publish handbooks for Presiding Officers, Returning Officers, Sector Officers and Election Observers? The ECI has published them all, not only what will be used in the latest elections but older versions also. Then again, the ECI publishes on its website the audit reports and contribution reports containing the list of donors that political parties submit to it every year. To the best of my knowledge, this good practice has no statutory mandate either.

The power point presentations, manuals and FAQs (frequently asked questions) about EVMs and VVPATs are all available publicly on its website as well as those of the Chief Electoral Officers (CEOs) in the states in various versions going back to 2018 or even earlier. Which part of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 makes it compulsory to publish all this information about the EVM-VVPAT combo, pray tell? The very fact that these are disclosed proactively indicates the ECI’s responsiveness to the myriad doubts raised by citizens, civil society groups and the mass media about the efficacy of the electronic voting system in its current avatar. Why should voter turnout data be subject to a lesser standard of transparency when analytical news reports are pointing to the inexplicable surges in the voting percentages released by the ECI at different stages of the poll process – during and immediately after?

At the risk of being labelled childish and churlish, this ‘silly’ question must be asked – the Election Commissioners, senior officers and their staff, surely eat lunch and snacks and drink coffee, tea and other beverages at Nirvachan Sadan, every working day – where is the statutory mandate for filling their tummies in this manner? Of course, we the citizenry will not begrudge them of their fundamental right to life which includes the right to food. We do not expect them to work on a hungry stomach unless they are bound by some vrat that requires fasting 2 even that will be respected as it is guaranteed by the Constitution under the fundamental right to freedom of religion. So, please do not expect us to sit at home and be satisfied with polling percentages; tell us how many of us have voted. It is non-personal data about ourselves which we have the fundamental right to know because we are the primary stakeholders of our democracy.

Also read: Why Returning Officers Hold the Key for Conducting Free and Fair Elections

Form 17C is not merely a record of the number of voters who cast their vote on polling day. It has another important use as well. Polling agents of contesting candidates present at the polling station must get copies of these filled out forms as a matter of right because their signatures have to be put on Part-I of this format. Later, the Presiding Officer and the RO both are instructed to make sufficient copies of these forms available to the polling agents in the respective handbooks published by the ECI. This is the only printed document apart from their IDs which counting agents are permitted to bring to the counting hall. The Counting Officers who also have a copy of this document have to ensure that the total number of votes polled as displayed on the Control Unit of the EVM tallies with the figure mentioned in Form 17C.

Part-II of Form 17C is filled up with the results after the counting is over and it is once again signed by all counting agents before copies are made and distributed to them as a matter of right. In fact, it is a crucial document without which one cannot make head or tail of the polling or the counting process either as a polling agent or as a counting agent.

Having acted as the counting agent for an independent candidate during the February 2020 elections to the Delhi Vidhan Sabha, I can vouch for its importance because a whole day was spent observing the counting without Form 17C as a reference document because the candidate had not collected them. Please take a look at the images below for all the information that a properly filled out Form 17C must contain.

Sheet-1 of Form 17C

Sheet-2 of Form 17C

 

Sheet-3 of Form 17C

Granted that all arguments presented above may be demolished by one major counterfactual point – the plea about the sheer volume of human resources required to publish the scanned copies of 10.48 lakh Form 17Cs or even collate the data and triple check it before publishing it from the digital database of ENCORE app. But what prevents the ECI from publishing the next best thing – Assembly Constituency-wise voter turnout numbers for every Lok Sabha Constituency which the Returning Officer (RO) sends them on just one sheet of paper at 7 am the day after polling is completed? This data providing the gender-wise number of electors who are on the voter lists along with similar breakups of those who actually voted is collated and filled out by the RO in Format-B and sent to the CEO and the ECI under her/his seal and signature, the morning after polling is completed. This requirement is mentioned in the checklist of Do’s and Don’ts for ROs which the ECI has published on its website 2 again without any express statutory mandate for such data reporting.

We did a quick review of the websites of CEOs looking for data filled out in Format-B. To our surprise, we found Assam had published gender-wise elector and voter turnout numbers for all three phases of polling along with percentages. Goa had published similar data for both Lok Sabha seats after polling was completed. They are available for anybody to look at without requiring any registration or password. Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan published this data only for Phase-1 of the elections and then went silent about the remaining phases, for reasons best known to the respective CEOs. So, despite the ECI’s blanket ban on disclosure of absolute voter turnout figures, a handful of CEOs have adopted a more transparent approach. Why can’t the ECI publish the absolute numbers available in these formats?

As the number of sheets containing this data will be equal to the number of seats for which polling was held in each phase, uploading them will require only one person to actually do it and another to supervise the task. This is not a humongous task after all.

Before concluding, another example of good practice must be pointed out. Bihar’s CEO has published the unique identification numbers of 1.27 lakh Ballot Units, 1.01 lakh Control Units and 1.09 lakh VVPAT Units that will be deployed across the 38 districts where elections are being held. This kind of proactive transparency will allay any fears in the minds of candidates, their agents or other poll watchers that instead of these machines actually used during the elections, others which have been hacked to give results not determined by the voters might be brought into the counting hall. Hats off to Bihar’s CEO for doing something which is not statutorily mandated. Where there is a will, there is a way.

It is not enough if the ECI merely says elections are free and fair to a chorus of helicoptered foreign observers and the judiciary looks upon it approvingly. Such fairness must be perceptible to the voters also. Our Constitution clothes the ECI with enormous powers to ensure that the people’s mandate is accurately recorded and declared. The ECI must heed Benjamin Disraeli’s words from his debut novel Vivian Grey: “…all power is a trust – that we are accountable for its exercise – that from the people, and for the people, all springs and all must exist.” Enhanced transparency is a sine qua non for earning the trust of the electorate.

Venkatesh Nayak is Director, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. All views are personal. The author is grateful to Ms. Priyadarshini Singh for assistance with the web research.

As Andhra Pradesh Goes to Polls, a Viral Video Gives Family Politics Its Time in the Sun

The video went viral at a time when Jagan and Sharmila were at loggerheads, staking claim to the legacy of their father YSR in the phase four elections. By doing it, Vijayamma has dropped the dice in favour of Sharmila.

Hyderabad: A video clip released by former Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy’s widow Vijayamma from the US 48 hours ahead of polls on Saturday (May 11), appealing to people to vote for her daughter and Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee chief Sharmila against the nominee of her son and Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy in the election to Kadapa parliamentary constituency has created a furore.

Andhra Pradesh is going to polls simultaneously for the 175-member state assembly and 25 parliamentary seats on Monday.

While YSR Congress, under Jagan, will contest alone, the opposition Telugu Desam Party of former chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu has entered into a seat sharing arrangement with the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Jana Sena of actor-turned-politician Pawan Kalyan as allies.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

The video went viral at a time when Jagan and Sharmila were at loggerheads, staking claim to the legacy of their father YSR in the phase four elections. By doing it, Vijayamma has dropped the dice in favour of Sharmila.

It is a known fact that Vijayamma had left for the US to stay with Sharmila’s son following a divide within the family over support to YSR Congress Party. Vijayamma had distanced herself from Jagan for nearly two years but, nonetheless, blessed him when he announced the first list of candidates for the elections. This raised hopes among Jagan’s followers that she stood by him. Then came the video.

Political observers feel that the family card has not worked in the AP elections earlier. An example of this was the defeat of  Chandrababu Naidu’s son Lokesh in the last assembly elections from Mangalagiri.

According to analyst Telakapalli Ravi, an artificial atmosphere was sought to be created by parties by bringing personal and family issues to the fore in elections. But they were rejected by the people. A recent example was Sharmila brandishing an axe to remind people of the killing of her uncle Y.S. Vivekananda Reddy in an attempt to kick off an emotional upsurge. This too failed to garner public sympathy.

Meanwhile, Jagan gave a ticket to his cousin Avinash Reddy, who is one of the accused in the murder of Vivekananda Reddy, to contest against Sharmila.

Real and basic issues of people have dominated narratives of parties in the campaign. The real issues continue to be privatisation of Visakhapatnam Steel Plant and special category status to AP, both of which Prime Minister Narendra Modi skipped mentioning in his election campaign in the state, focusing instead on Muslim reservations and the controversy over the location of the state capital.

The alliance of TDP with BJP has purchased problems for the former. This was evident during the release of the election manifesto of the three-party front. The TDP and Jana Sena released a document that did not contain a photo of Modi.

The 4% reservation for Muslims which the TDP has promised to continue became the bone of contention between TDP and BJP. Modi threatened to quash these reservations while Naidu has assured voters that he would continue them in election speeches, widening the gap between them.

If the TDP was bogged down with the BJP, the YSR Congress was at pains to convince people about the merits of the Andhra Pradesh Land Titling Act which it enacted in 2022.

The legislation aimed to streamline land records, resolve land disputes and provide permanent titles to holdings after the ongoing survey was completed in another two years.

The TDP cried foul that the law aimed to take away people’s lands and promised to revoke it on assuming power.

Since welfare programmes of YSR Congress had become a big hit and the controversy over the reservation policy of the Centre has raised its head, Ravi expected both the issues also to impact the outcome of elections.

He said he had a distinct feeling somehow that YSR Congress had an edge over the rival parties and might scrape through.

For the TDP, it is an enormous task to overcome its poor performance in the last assembly elections. The party won just 23 seats across the state, including three in the four Rayalaseema districts and adjoining Nellore. The winners were Naidu, his brother-in-law Balakrishna and a former minister, Payyavula Keshav.

The party had fared better but still trailed behind YSR Congress in Rayalaseema in the 2014 assembly elections as well.

The TDP is contesting in 144 assembly and 17 parliamentary constituencies, BJP in 10 and 6 and Jana Sena in 21 and 2 respectively in the current elections. The BJP and Congress did not win a single parliament or assembly seat last time but the Jana Sena won a lone assembly seat last time.

Both YSR Congress and TDP took lessons from the defeat of Bharat Rashtra Samiti in the elections to Telangana assembly while allotting tickets to aspirants.

The YSR Congress replaced 70 of its incumbent MLAs while the TDP did it for 51 candidates who contested the last time but lost. Three incumbent MLAs of YSR Congress were nominated by the TDP after they quit the party.

A prominent leader of TDP, Vallabhaneni Vamshi, who won last time from Gannavaram by a mere 838 votes was dropped and the runner-up of YSR Congress, Yarlagadda Venkat Rao, replaced his candidature from the same constituency.

In contrast, the BRS had denied tickets to only seven sitting MLAs. This invited strong  criticism that the party protected sitting MLAs despite allegations of corruption and land grabbing against them – which showed in the election results.

Transparency Activists and Lawyers Urge EC to Disclose Authenticated Voter Turnout Records

The signatories expressed concern regarding the large fluctuation in figures of voter turnout in the first two phases of the ongoing general elections.

New Delhi: Transparency activists, lawyers, and retired civil servants have written to the Election Commission of India demanding proactive disclosure of Part-I of form 17 C on the website of the ECI.

Expressing concern regarding the large fluctuation in figures of voter turnout in the first two phases of the ongoing general elections, the signatories urged the ECI to immediately disclose the authenticated record of voter turnout as contained in Part I of Form 17C of every polling station where voting took place in the first three phases.

To enhance transparency and public trust in the electoral process, they demanded that for the remaining phases, this information be publicly displayed on the ECI website within 48 hours of the close of polls.

Please see full text of letter below.

May 9, 2024
To
Chief Election Commissioner & Election Commissioners
Election Commission of India
Dear Sirs,
Subject- Proactive disclosure of Part I of Form 17C to put to rest doubts regarding fluctuation in
figures of votes polled

We are writing to flag our concerns arising from the large fluctuation in figures of voter turnout in the first two phases of the ongoing general elections and to urge the Election Commission of India to immediately disclose through its website, the authenticated record of voter turnout as contained in Part I of Form 17C. As per Rule 49S of the Conduct of Elections Rules, at the close of polling, the presiding officer has to prepare an account of votes recorded in Part I of Form 17C and also furnish an authenticated copy of this to every polling agent.

For the first phase of elections, the ECI in its press note on the day of polling (19.4.2024) stated that as of 7 pm, the estimated voter turnout was over 60%. The voter turnout data published 11 days later by ECI on April 30th, provided a figure of 66.14%- a jump of more than 6%. Similarly, for the second phase, the press note on the day of polling (26.4.2024) stated that the approximate voter turnout was 60.96% as of 7 pm, which was subsequently revised to 66.71% in the press note of April 30, 2024. The inordinate delay in the release of voter turnout, coupled with the unusually high revision (of nearly 6%) sans any explanation in the ECI’s press note of April 30th, has raised concerns and doubts among people about the voter turnout figures.

Public trust in the electoral process is key to ensure robust functioning of our democracy. We, therefore, urge the ECI to immediately upload on the Commission’s website a scanned legible copy of Part I of Form 17C (Account of Votes Recorded) of every polling station where voting took place in the first three phases. Further, for the remaining phases, this information must be publicly displayed on the ECI website within 48 hours of the close of polls.

In addition to uploading a scanned copy of the forms, a tabulation of the constituency and polling station wise figures of voter turnout in absolute numbers must also be publicly displayed on the ECI website.

We hope the ECI will take cognisance of this important issue and urgently take appropriate steps, as outlined above, to enhance transparency and voter confidence in the electoral process.

Thank you,

1. Anjali Bhardwaj, Transparency activist
2. Prashant Bhushan, Lawyer & activist
3. MG Devasahayam, IAS (Retd.) & Coordinator, Citizens Commission on Elections initiative
4. Yogendra Yadav, Swaraj Abhiyan
5. Vrinda Grover, Lawyer and human rights activist
6. Shailesh Gandhi, Former Central Information Commissioner
7. Pamela Philipose, Journalist
8. Sundar Burra, IAS (Retd.)

9. Deb Mukharji, IFS (Retd.)
10. Ashok Sharma, IFS (Retd.)
11. Aditi Mehta, IAS (Retd.)
12. Jayati Ghosh, Economist
13. Vipul Mudgal, Common Cause
14. Sanjay Jha, Author
15. Shabnam Hashmi, Anhad
16. Amrita Johri, RTI Activist
17. Feroze Mithiborwala, Social Activist
18. Umakant Lakhera, Former President, Press Club of India

Mainpuri: Accusations Fly Between BJP and SP Over Maharana Pratap

A video emerged recently of some men, allegedly BJP workers, cleaning a temple in Kannauj after Akhilesh Yadav had visited it. At a time when caste tensions between Thakurs and Yadavs escalating, episodes such as these could influence voting in Kannauj on May 13.

New Delhi: Ten constituencies in Uttar Pradesh voted on May 7 amid swelling caste tension between the dominant Thakur community and the backward caste Yadavs, both of whom consider themselves Kshatriyas or warriors.

Several of these seats are considered stronghold areas of the Samajwadi Party’s ruling family, the Yadavs of Saifai. Those in the fray include SP president Akhilesh Yadav’s wife Dimple Yadav (Mainpuri), and his cousins Akshay Yadav (Firozabad) and Aditya Yadav (Budaun).

In Mainpuri, Dimple Yadav, the daughter-in-law of the late Mulayam Singh, faced the challenge of a BJP state minister Jaiveer Singh, a Thakur.  Dimple Yadav was born into a Thakur family but identifies by her husband’s Yadav identity.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

The contest took a heated turn when on Saturday the BJP accused the SP of insulting Maharana Pratap after several SP workers climbed atop a statute of the Rajput icon in Mainpuri after the conclusion of a massive roadshow by Akhilesh Yadav in favour of his wife. “Jai Shiva Sardar ki, Jai Maharana Pratap Ki,” the SP workers shouted as they tried to plant party flags on the statue in Karhal.

Even as the BJP accused the SP of insulting Pratap, police lodged a first information report (FIR) against over 100 SP workers on charges of attempting to vandalise the statue. Three persons, all Yadavs, were later arrested. That’s not where it ended. A video, widely shared on social media, showed a bunch of men, allegedly Thakurs linked to the BJP, cleansing the statue with a water tanker to symbolically purify it while hurling sexist and casteist abuses at the Yadav caste. The vulgar language used by them cannot be reproduced here. Another video showing some alleged BJP workers sexually abusing Dimple Yadav also created outrage among the SP. Police said they would take action after investigating the videos.

Shiv Kumar Yadav, national president of a Yadav group, Yadav Sena, appealed to chief minister Yogi Adityanath and the Election Commission of India to take note of the abuses hurled at his community by Thakurs in Mainpuri. Referring to the cleansing of the Maharana Pratap statue, Shiv Kumar said this was done by those belonging to Adityanath’s case because of their “hate for the Yadav community and Akhilesh Yadav.” “These are the same people who purified the CM residence (in Lucknow in 2017) after (Akhilesh Yadav’s) tenure as CM. Because in their view, Akhilesh Yadav is a Shudra. Maharana Pratap’s statue became impure after Akhilesh Yadav and Dimple Yadav touched it,” said Shiv Kumar. The Yadav Sena chief warned that if action was not taken against those who insulted the community, “if the Yadavs retaliated, they would be called as goondas.”

A similar controversy occurred in Kannauj, where Akhilesh Yadav is himself contesting. After Akhilesh visited the Siddhapeeth Baba Gauri Shankar Mahadev Temple to offer prayers during his campaign, a video circulated on social media showing some men, allegedly linked to the BJP, washing the temple premises. Kannauj votes on May 13 but such events are bound to influence opinion in the Yadav family stronghold that voted on May 7.

Adityanath was quick to latch on to the controversy between the two castes. Addressing a rally in Shahjahanpur, Adityanath accused the SP of trying to “desecrate” the statue of “national hero” Maharana Pratap.

“SP’s goondas climbed atop the statue and tried to break his spear, Maharana Pratap’s aan, baan aur shaan (honour, pride and prestige),” said Adityanath. He accused the SP workers of abusing the statue, even though videos online showed them paying tribute to the Rajput ruler.

“[We] must tell these progeny of Akbar and Aurangzeb that this is Naya Bharat. And Naya Bharat will not tolerate the insult of our national heroes,” said Adityanath.

The UP CM also issued a warning to his opponents. “Whenever elections are here, these goondas get restless. (Goondo ki garmi chadne lagti hain). When the election results are announced, their garmi will also subside (become shant) gradually,” said Adityanath.

Akhilesh Yadav chose to not get fully drawn into the controversy. Responding to questions by the media, he accused the BJP of trying to divert attention from the main issues and circulating a muted video clip of the statue incident as “part of a conspiracy.” Akhilesh said that some “mindless” workers climbed atop the statue but there was no attempt to insult Maharana Pratap. “We view Maharana Pratap’s valour, contribution and courage with good emotions. The BJP finds politics in everything,” said Akhilesh. He asked why the police was yet to take action against those who used offensive language against women to target the SP but sent to jail his party workers.

The third phase of voting in UP took place after the BJP faced protests by the Thakur-Rajput community in the first two rounds. In the 10 seats that voted on May 7, two seats, Mainpuri and Firozabad, witnessed a Yadav versus Thakur battle. In Mainpuri, Dimple Yadav faced Jaiveer Singh, while in Firozabad Akshay Yadav was up against the BJP’s Thakur Vishwadeep Singh, who had stood third on a BSP ticket in 2014. In Budaun, another Yadav family bastion, Shivpal Yadav’s son Aditya Yadav faced a Shakya (OBC) candidate Durg Vijay Singh Shakya.

The third round of voting was a test for the SP to reclaim the ground it lost to the BJP in 2019, when it ceded both the Budaun and Firozabad seats (along with Kannauj). While Dimple Yadav lost in Kannauj, Akshay Yadav was defeated in Firozabad and Dharmendra Yadav, another cousin of Akhilesh Yadav, lost from his constituency Budaun. Akhilesh’s uncle Shivpal Yadav was then not on good terms with him. In Firozabad, it was Shivpal who caused Akshay Yadav’s defeat after he cut over 90,000 votes. This time, however, the Yadav family has reconciled its internal differences and actively campaigned for each other. Addressing a rally in Budaun, Akhilesh Yadav spoke about how he had carried his cousin Akshay Yadav in his arms. The Yadavs also evoked the legacy of Mulayam Singh, the SP founder and Yadav family patriarch, who died in 2022.

Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP’s chief campaigner, could not but refer to Mulayam during his campaign in Etawah. Addressing a rally there, Modi started his speech by mentioning how in the last Parliament session before the 2019 Lok Sabha election, Mulayam had expressed hope that Modi would be elected as PM again. Modi remembered it as Mulayam’s “ashirwad” for him, as he tried to reach out to the Yadavs who live there in large numbers. As reported earlier by The Wire, in this election the BJP is trying to pitch the Yadav community against the Yadav family of SP, by trying to exploit the fact that the SP has fielded only Yadavs from Mulayam Singh Yadav’s family.

Akhilesh Yadav responded to the cleaning of the temple premises in Kannauj, calling it an act of desperation by the BJP.

“They have stooped so low that if we visit a temple, they clean it. BJP must remember that today you have washed the (temple) premises. The janta will clean you out in such a way by voting that you will not return again. PDA iss baar inko dhone ja raha hain,” said Akhilesh Yadav in Akbarpur. PDA refers to Pichda Dalit Alpsankhyak, the political alliance of OBCs, Dalits and Muslims, that the SP is trying to formulate to defeat the BJP.