Votes cast as a 'weapon of the weak'
By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - India's rich and middle class urban voters have failed to show up
in large numbers to exercise their franchise in the country's 15th month-long
general election. Despite a massive campaign to get the educated to vote, the
software hubs of Bangalore and Pune, the two main metros which went to the
polls in the second phase of voting on April 23, registered poor turnout.
In contrast to rural areas, which had a turnout of 60%, constituencies in
Bangalore city registered a mere 46% turnout, a figure that is below the
national average in two phases of voting so far but also lower than turnout in
the 2004 general election. As in previous elections, in the two rounds of
voting that have been
completed in India's multi-phase general election, urban middle-class voters
have indicated that they are laggards in comparison to the rural or urban poor.
Media reports on the Indian elections often draw attention to the magnitude of
the electoral exercise. Indeed, it is hard not to be impressed by the sheer
scale of the election. A 714-million-strong electorate will vote in 828,804
polling booths in 543 constituencies in a five-phase election spread over a
month. Four million electoral officials and 2.1 million security personnel are
overseeing the process to ensure that it is free, fair and peaceful. Animals,
too, are on hand to assist in the process. In the states of Assam and Meghalaya
in India's northeast, elephants carry officials and polling material to voting
booths.
The Election Commission (EC), which conducts the polls, goes the extra mile to
ensure that voters can exercise their franchise. In some parts of the country,
which are inaccessible by roads, officials trek for three to four days or ride
on the backs of elephants to set up polling booths.
In the western state of Gujarat, the EC has set up a polling booth for one
voter - a priest in a temple in the heart of the Gir forest, which is home to
the Asiatic lion. He will vote in the third phase of the election.
Officials brave wild animals, scorching heat, long treks, militants and
impatient voters to ensure that people can exercise their fundamental right to
vote.
As remarkable as these statistics or the logistics involved in conducting the
election is the mass participation in Indian elections. Unlike the global trend
of a steady decline in voting levels, in India voter turnout over the years has
either increased or remained stable.
And what makes this rise in voter turnout significant is that it is spurred by
the rise in participation in elections by the poor, women, lower castes and
Dalits and tribals. The most vulnerable sections of Indian society are
increasingly enthusiastic about voting.
Unlike Western democracies, which granted the right to vote first to propertied
men, later educated men, then all men and only after much debate and agitation
to women, independent India granted all adult men and women regardless of their
religion, caste, language, wealth or education the right to vote in one fell
swoop, points out Ramachandra Guha, author of India after Gandhi: The History of
the World's Largest Democracy.
The Indian constitution granted all its citizens the right to vote. Right from
the first general election in 1952, India's poorest and most marginalized
sections have possessed the right to vote. And they have been the most keen to
exercise this right.
Voter turnout in India has been higher in rural areas than in cities since
1977. The poor vote more than the rich, especially in urban areas and in the
past four general elections, Dalits (or Untouchables as they used to be called)
have voted more than upper-caste Hindus, says Yogendra Yadav, a political
analyst with the Center for the Study of Developing Societies. "This
'participatory upsurge' from below has defined the character of Indian
democracy in the past two decades or so," he says.
This is quite unlike the experience in Western democracies where it is the
rich, the well-educated and those belonging to the majority community who are
more likely to vote and participate in political activity.
Analysts have pointed out that if those at the lower end of the socio-economic
hierarchy take the trouble to vote, defying threats and violence, it is because
democracy is bringing change in their lives, however small these might be.
Polling day is that one big day on which their decision matters, when their
choice counts.
Voters defy militants' calls for a boycott of the poll to exercise their
franchise. Maoists have called for a poll boycott and sought to impose it with
intimidation and violence. Still, people in the states of Jharkhand and
Chhattisgarh have come out to vote. In assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir
in November and December last year, 62% of the electorate voted in spite of a
boycott call by separatists.
The media have often underestimated the rural/poor voter, looking on him or her
as someone who votes along caste or other parochial lines, who votes as told to
rather than on the basis of an informed choice.
This might be true, but only to a limited extent. In 2004, the ruling National
Democratic Alliance (NDA) campaigned on an "India Shining" slogan. But India
was not shining for rural Indians and those at the bottom of the heap. Unlike
the educated/urban voter who swallowed the NDA's propaganda campaign, the rural
voters registered their protest through the ballot box. They voted out the NDA.
The vote is the "weapon of the weak", points out Yadav.
This time around, whether the rural voter who is reeling under a severe
agrarian crisis is impressed by the 8% average economic growth rate achieved
under the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government is
debatable. To its credit, the UPA has put in place a rural employment guarantee
scheme that provides one member of every rural household with work for 100 days
every year.
Both the Congress and the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have
made provision of heavily subsidized wheat and rice a central plank in their
election campaigns. The Congress has promised every poor family 25 kilograms of
wheat or rice at 3 rupees (US$0.06) a kilogram and the BJP 35 kilograms at 2
rupees per kg.
One of the districts that voted in the first phase was Kandhamal in the eastern
state of Orissa, which was ravaged by anti-Christian violence last year. Voter
turnout in the district was 65.7%. About 90% of those still living in relief
camps - people who are too terrified to return to their homes for fear of
communal violence - turned up at polling booths despite a Maoist call for a
poll boycott and fear of communal violence. Clearly, these victims of communal
violence are looking on the ballot box with some hope.
How do Muslims - India's largest religious minority - view the democratic
process? Contrary to the perception worldwide that Muslims do not believe in
democracy, Muslims in India are as enthusiastic as Hindus in their stated
support of democracy. Voter turnout among Muslims, which dipped in the early
1990s and again in 2004, has generally been rising or stable and is as robust
as that among Hindus. "Clearly, Indian Muslims are not opting out of democratic
politics," says Yadav.
It is not religion but class that appears to influence voter turnout. The rich
and middle class Indian doesn't seem to share the faith the poor have in the
elections and the power of the vote. Over the years, urban apathy has grown.
All the parties are the same, urban voters grumble, pointing to the fielding of
criminal and corrupt candidates in some areas.
Voter turnout in successive elections over the past two decades indicate that
for all their whining about the quality of politicians who represent them in
parliament and state assemblies, India's educated and more privileged sections
don't do anything about it on polling day. They simply stay away.
South Mumbai, where many of India's millionaires and billionaires live and work
is notorious for poor turnout on polling day, as is Bangalore, India's software
hub. State assembly elections in Bangalore in May last year saw an abysmal 44%
exercise their franchise, the lowest in the past five elections.
Will Mumbai, Delhi and other Indian cities go Bangalore's way in the coming
phases of voting? The terror attacks in Mumbai in November last year shook up
the country's politically apathetic youth and brought them out into the streets
demanding greater accountability and better performance from the political
elite. Thousands participated in candlelight vigils and online campaigns.
Whether they will leave the comfort of their air-conditioned homes to wait in
long lines outside polling booths to vote in scorching heat is another matter.
Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in
Bangalore.
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