FORMING governments through popular elections based on universal adult franchise is one of the more significant political inventions in human history. In democracies, we see millions of people registering their individual preferences leading to a collective electoral outcome that is binding on all. Thus, elections are a means to choose representative governments, to hold them accountable to the people, and to give shape and exercise influence on the policies of the government.

How leaders win and how voters decide in elections is one big question that has engaged the minds of social science researchers and political commentators since the time democracy came to be established in different parts of the world. An election is a significant moment arising at the interstices between two governments, a time when people are called upon to exercise their supreme authority of choosing their leaders in government. Those who study elections use this moment to understand the political process, the legitimacy of the state, citizens’ political values and views, their perception of the political reality, and their attitude toward parties and leaders.

Elections, as we understand them today, are only about 100 years old. With the expansion of democracy and the institutionalization of universal franchise came the election studies in Western Europe. The advent of survey research in the USA made election studies more systematic and sophisticated over the past five or six decades. India is a latecomer to the world of democracy, as also the study of elections. Analyses of elections in the early decades of independence were mostly based on aggregate data made available by the Election Commission. Social anthropologists took up micro-level case studies in select constituencies and localities focusing on the role of social identities in the electoral process, candidate selection, and leadership issues.

However, survey method slowly gained prominence.¹ The methods and findings from the election studies at the Survey Research Centre of the University of Michigan had greatly influenced election studies in India in the 1960s. When Rajni Kothari returned to India from Michigan, he incorporated this new methodology to his work at the Delhi based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) which he had founded in 1963.² The first election study using survey based analysis was of the Kerala state in 1965. Bashiruddin Ahmed and others at the CSDS, along with Samuel Eldersveld of the University of Michigan, subsequently studied the general elections in 1967 and 1971.

 

The puzzles and curiosities that spurred election studies in the West and India are different, though both have followed a similar trajectory in terms of methods and evolution. When universal adult franchise was introduced in the West European countries at the turn of the 20th century, the communists wanted to use it to further their revolutionary struggle, while the social democrats saw in it a way for a peaceful transition to socialism. The dominant classes were apprehensive that this kind of democracy would pave the way for the working classes to take power. However, nothing of the sort happened. With each election, the communist fervour diminished, social democrats took to the parliamentary path, and the political systems became more stable than before.

Thus, the puzzle as to why class voting – the members of the poor and working classes voting overwhelmingly for socialist parties, their natural choice – did not happen, gave rise to the early election studies in Europe. Survey research during the 1950s and 1960s, especially in the US, further examined the factors that contributed to the stability of citizens’ political attitudes and voting preferences. The Columbia School and the Michigan School found that voting was more a matter of sentiment rather than an expression of reasoned preference. Ideology and issues played a minor role in the political process. What matters more is how individuals were socialized, how political choices originate in ethnic, sectional and family traditions, and what kind of enduring party attachments citizens develop over the years.

 

We notice similar concerns in Indian election studies, though with one difference. Here the puzzle was how democracy works in a country characterized by deep and multiple social cleavages, pervasive poverty and economic backwardness, illiteracy, and a high degree of social and cultural heterogeneity. Many believed that democracy was doomed to fail under these circumstances or that some authoritarian interlude was needed to place India on the path of development before it opened up democratic freedoms to its citizens. However, the doomsayers were proved wrong as democracy struck deep roots in the country with regular elections and peaceful transfer of governmental power between the contending parties.

The consolidation of democratic political institutions, the rise of political parties opposed to the Congress and the eventual breakdown of the ‘Congress system’ – the intrinsic logic of change that was seen in the election verdicts and the apparent political acumen of Indian people – all fascinated the political commentators as well as political scientists.

One idea that appealed to students of Indian politics was that tradition and modernity need not be opposed to each other; instead, what we might be seeing is the modernity of tradition. Traditional institutions such as caste, tribe and religion provided the ground on which modern institutions of parties and state would grow, and sentiments around region and language need not be at loggerheads with the task of nation building. This kind of an approach was evident in the objectives of the election studies undertaken by scholars at the CSDS in the 1960s and 1970s: to assess the politicization of the Indian masses and the extent of their socialization to democratic values. The major question posed in the national election surveys of the 1967 and 1971 was: ‘To what extent has the Indian public accepted the norms of political democracy and participated meaningfully in the democratic system? And, consequently, what is the character of Indian political development at the mass level.’³ If it was the puzzle of the stability of voting preferences and that of the system that gave rise to the election studies in the West, it was the puzzle of a modern democracy working in a society characterized by traditional culture, economic backwardness, and deep social cleavages that gave rise to election studies in India.

 

During the 1950s and later, ‘development’ was the dominant paradigm in social science to study developing nations such as India. By the 1980s, it had been replaced by ‘governance’ to assess the state of the polity across nations and to prescribe the direction in which these nations should travel. Social capital, trust, decentralization, economic reforms, accountability and so on, constituted the new vocabulary of politics. Soon thereafter, studies that emanated from western institutions began to paint a dismal picture of decline and decay in Indian politics that called for jettisoning the extant model of development and the dismantling of state enterprises and economy built over decades. The Indian state was seen crumbling under the pressure of welfare demands of its people beyond the system’s carrying capacity. The focus now was on the populist, corrupt and criminal political leadership, the perils of an extended state, and the failure of a centralized planned economy to deliver development.

It was at this crucial period of change in the dominant paradigm and changed vocabulary of politics, that the second wave of survey based election studies was initiated by Yogendra Yadav at the CSDS. He brought together a group of political scientists located in different parts of the country, called Lokniti, with the objective of studying democracy, including elections. This group has studied, among others, every election held in India since 1996, both to the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies.

 

Instead of focusing on the games leaders play, and the intricacies of institutional functioning, the election studies programme (called the NES at the national level) turned the spotlight on the citizen to show how voter preferences had changed over time, leading to multiple transformations in the terrain of politics. These studies contested the dismal picture painted by some political scientists and commentators to instead argue that the so-called crisis of governability, unstable governments, or the rise of identity politics and caste-community-region based parties were in fact a reflection of a fundamental social and political transformation taking place in India. At the same time, they steered clear of a romantic view of India’s polity as constituting a shining island of democracy in the midst of authoritarian and/or dysfunctional polities of the Third World.

Thus, election studies tried to transcend both the desperate and romantic narratives of Indian democracy. While analyzing individual-level attitudes, perceptions and decisions of voters, these studies also tried to arrive at generalizations about Indian politics by juxtaposing them with other democracies elsewhere. They consider the self-reported perceptions of citizens as the only source of authentic information for an objective assessment of the prevailing political condition. Thus, election surveys try to transcend fiction and reflection.

 

We see a remarkable continuity between the first generation election surveys and those carried out in the 1990s. To a great extent, this could be due to the involvement of the first generation scholars who had participated in and help steer the election surveys in 1970s – such as Dhirubhai Sheth, Ashis Nandy and V.B. Singh – in the second generation studies that began in the 1990s. The same positive, optimistic and critical approach to Indian democracy that marked these scholars continued with the team led by Yogendra Yadav. It lies in the view that the tradition and modernity dichotomy is a meaningless way to characterize Indian politics; that democratic institutions and practices introduce significant social and economic changes in society; and that increased political participation has led to greater democratic upsurge, protest and rebellion.

In this article, we identify a few major themes that have been addressed by India’s election surveys in the past couple of decades. We look at some interesting findings thrown up by these studies that help us better understand Indian politics.

 

Election studies have successfully captured the democratic churning and social transformation taking place in India. We learn that in the matter of elections, people who are lower on socio-economic status do not lag behind the well-to-do. The democratic upsurge characterized by increased political participation of the hitherto marginalized sections of society, including the Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Classes, has resulted in the downward expansion of democracy. Voter turnout tends to be higher among the poor compared to the middle and upper classes, among the less educated compared to those with higher education, and in rural areas than the urban areas.⁴ This is in sharp contrast to western democracies where those with higher social and economic status and educational levels report higher rates of electoral participation than those with lower status and education.

Yogendra Yadav attributes this extraordinary condition of the 1990s to intense political mobilization as new parties emerged as strong and successful contenders for power. What is characterized as India’s ‘third electoral system’, represents an expansion of democracy and political choices available to voters.⁵ Comparing the survey data of 1971 and 1996, Javeed Alam argued that the increased political participation of the socially disadvantaged sections and their struggles for dignity and equality have redrawn the boundaries of democratic politics in India. The higher turnout among these sections can be attributed to increased aspirations to improve their living conditions through democracy.⁶

Election studies also show that a significant proportion of people are either close to a political party or report membership in one party or the other. Similarly, levels of participation in election related activities such as attending election meetings, participating in election rallies and campaigns, contributing money to the candidate or party, distributing party leaflets, and so on, seem to match the levels of participation in other democracies. Intriguingly, however, while we speak of robustness of voter turnout in India, we cannot say the same about voter interest in politics. Time series data show that a majority of the electorate does not show interest in politics. Their proportion increases as we go down the levels of education and social and economic status. So, we have a peculiar situation where voter turnout tends to be high, but interest in politics is low, and where party attachment is high but trust in parties is low.

 

The role of social identities in influencing, if not determining, the voting process is a major theme in the study of elections all over the world. The pioneers in election studies, such as those at the Columbia School in the United States, argued in the 1950s that people belonging to homogenous social groups tend to vote for the same party, and do so consistently across time. It is surprising that even after two hundred years of democratic experience, the African-Americans vote almost as a block, as evident from the US presidential election in 2012 in which more than 90 per cent of them voted for the Democratic Party candidate.

In India, the role of caste in influencing the vote has remained one of the major themes of election studies. The first national survey of voting behaviour in India held immediately after the fourth general election in 1967 reinforced the view that the role of caste in electoral politics was considerable.⁷ The 1971 study says that while caste was still a significant influence, it has been integrated with new associations and beliefs.⁸ Analyzing the 2009 elections, Yadav and Palshikar observed that caste-community cleavages influences voting more than most other social divisions.⁹ However, Ghanshyam Shah has argued that the intensity and nature of caste sentiment has changed over the decades, and retains only a limited influence on voting decisions, i.e. caste is only one factor that influences voting decisions, not a determining one.¹⁰

 

Caste is a tricky issue in Indian politics. Election surveys show that a large chunk of voters of different castes actually vote for the same party and do so consistently over several elections. For example, the Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar enjoys overwhelming support among the Yadavs, as does the Bahujan Samaj Party among the Dalits in Uttar Pradesh. It appears that people tend to identify a party with a particular caste depending on the social identity of the party leadership. As castes are specific to states, such identities emerge stronger at the state level than at the national level.

However, we cannot immediately jump to the conclusion that people of all castes move like one big bloc behind one leader or party. When we say that the caste factor plays an important role, several caveats are in order. First, we find sharp divisions within castes in the sense that voters from these social groups are divided between two or more parties. Second, we notice a significant degree of fluidity and shift in electoral support from different castes and communities. In several states, the cleavages are not fixed or permanent. India has a high level of electoral volatility; a significant number of voters change their preference from one election to the other.¹¹

 

The role of religious identity is another issue in election studies everywhere. It has acquired a special place in India due to the rise of the BJP to power in the 1990s. Most commentators hold the view that the BJP rose to become a strong political force through its active mobilization of people on the basis of Hindu cultural nationalism. Even as some think it could consolidate power because it has moderated its position on a host of contentious issues, others believe that the party has only masked its communal agenda. Based on election surveys data, Suhas Palshikar offers a nuanced explanation by saying that the middle ground of public opinion in Indian politics had over time moved to the right, making the BJP appear a centrist force.¹²

The problem with the BJP’s Hindutva is that for a long time it did not seek to promote the interest and respect the sentiments of all Hindus; it was associated with the interests and sentiments of upper caste Hindus while the interests and sentiments of the backward and scheduled caste Hindus were generally ignored. This the party realized in the mid-1990s as it embarked upon the project of social engineering – roping in the OBCs by accommodating its representatives at the leadership level in different states. For several decades before it came to power at the Centre, the BJP had secured considerable support from the urban based upper caste voters in several states. The party continues to enjoy that support even now. However, what is significant is that its vote share among the OBCs went up considerably in the 1990s, enabling it to wrest power at the national level. While this process of broad-basing the party was pushed back during the Vajpayee regime as most OBC leaders were either shunted out of the party or pushed to the margins, it has acquired greater force within the BJP with the advent of Narendra Modi to top leadership. He was perhaps the first among the top leaders of the party to make an open appeal for the support of the socially backward sections of Hindu society. In the 2014 elections, the BJP substantially increased its votes among the OBCs, SCs and STs.13 This secularization of the BJP’s support base is likely to have far-reaching consequences for the BJP, patterns of party competition, and for the Indian polity at large.

 

The view that economic factors have come to occupy a greater place in the thinking of voters has gained strength in recent years. The vote for the ruling party depends on how well it handles the national economy, as well as the personal economic condition of voters. The assumption is that if the national economy does not do well or the personal economic condition of voters has deteriorated during the years of the incumbent government, a voter may abandon the ruling party. Studies show that in some countries personal welfare matters more than the state of the national economy, while in others the reverse holds true.

 

Election studies in India routinely ask questions about voters’ perception of their household economic condition as well as the national economic situation. The data shows that both the perceptions of personal and national economic condition matter to Indian voters. However, between the two, the influence of personal economic considerations seems to matter more than evaluations of the national economy. Election surveys show that close to three-fourths of people mention provision of basic amenities such as drinking water, electricity, housing, food and clothing, education and health facilities as well as personal economic hardships such as unemployment, poverty, price rise and credit issues as the most important problems they face. It is possible that in a situation of scarcity and deprivation of material goods, and where people’s dependence on the government for providing basic needs is high, voters tend to attach greater importance to personal economic considerations.¹⁴

Commentators may run down politicians for indulging in welfare populism – promising to provide basic needs and spending much of the revenue on welfare schemes. These commentators, many of whom are critical of governments for their inability to fast track liberalization reforms in India, fail to realize that the politicians prefer to spend public money on welfare schemes, because of democratic compulsions. They have to attend to the immediate welfare needs of the people to continue in or gain power. This is what democratic politics is all about. It is a different matter that political leaders devise ways in this process to amass personal wealth.

 

Election surveys may not have answers to all/most questions about Indian democracy. Nevertheless, they do enable us to answer some questions to some extent. They can be reinforced by findings from election studies based on other empirical studies using qualitative data. The election surveys in India have the same limitations that every other large sample survey that employs field investigators will have anywhere in the world.

What is important is that over the past 50 years, since the initial Kerala study in 1965, election surveys have generated huge data sets that help us understand Indian politics with greater confidence instead of passing off personal opinion as scholarly observations with universal validity. They also throw light on the subtle aspects of the working of Indian politics.

Election studies make it evident that India has been moving towards greater democracy with an increased political awareness and participation of its people. While solidarities based on social identities continue in the political domain, they have changed over the decades due to politicization of caste and community as well as internal differentiation within them. It is a mix of interests and sentiments that drives voter choice, which in turn opens up more space for welfare and governance issues.

 

Footnotes:

1. For a review of the evolution of election studies, methodologies adopted, contributions, limitations and future directions, see Suhas Palshikar, ‘Election Studies’, in K.C. Suri (ed), Indian Democracy. ICSSR Research Surveys and Explorations: Political Science. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2013, pp. 161-208.

2. Stephanie Tawa Lama-Rewal, ‘Studying Elections in India: Scientific and Political Debates’, Samaj, South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal 3, 2009. http://samaj. revues.org/2784.

3. Samuel J. Eldersveld and Bashiruddin Ahmed, Citizens and Politics: Mass Political Behavior in India, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1978, p. ix.

4. Sanjay Kumar, ‘Patterns of Political Participation: Trends and Perspective’, Economic and Political Weekly 44(39), 26 September 2009, pp. 47-51.

5. Yogendra Yadav, ‘Electoral Politics in the Time of Change: India’s Third Electoral System, 1989-99’, Economic and Political Weekly 34(34 & 35), August/September, 1999, pp. 2393-2399.

6. Javeed Alam, Who Wants Democracy? Orient Longman, New Delhi, 2004.

7. Bashiruddin Ahmed, ‘Caste and Electoral Politics’, Asian Survey 10(11), November 1970, pp. 979-992.

8. Eldersveld and Ahmed, 1978, op cit., fn. 3, p. 289.

9. Yogendra Yadav and Suhas Palshikar, ‘Between Fortuna and Virtu: Explaining the Congress’ Ambiguous Victory in 2009’, Economic and Political Weekly 44(39), 26 September 2009, pp. 33-46.

10. Ghanshyam Shah, ‘Beyond Caste Voting: Modasa, Gujarat Revisited’, Economic and Political Weekly 45(4), 23 January 2010, pp. 54-61.

11. K.C. Suri, ‘Elections and Voting in India’, in Jakub Zajaczkowski, Jivanta Schottli and Manish Thapa (eds.), India in the Contemporary World: Polity, Economy and International Relations. Routledge, London, 2014, pp. 41-63.

12. Suhas Palshikar, ‘Majoritarian Middle Ground?’ Economic and Political Weekly 49(51), pp. 5426-5430.

13. Suhas Palshikar and K.C. Suri, ‘India’s 2014 Lok Sabha Elections: Critical Shifts in the Long Term, Caution in the Short Term’, Economic and Political Weekly 49(39), 27 September 2014, pp. 39-49.

14. K.C. Suri, ‘The Economy and Voting in the 15th Lok Sabha Elections’, Economic and Political Weekly 44(39), 26 September 2009, pp. 64-70.