THE political landscape in India seems to change dramatically every twenty years or so. Looking back one can see traces of these changes surfacing around the period of general elections, though their full impact come to be discerned clearly only much later. For the participants each election and its outcome is important. But in the memory of the nation some elections stand out more than others; they gain greater significance than others as symbols marking the beginning of a new phase of Indian democracy.

Today, once again, we stand at the threshold of another such shift. We can see glimpses of a deeper structural change which is likely to influence not just this election but many others yet to come. It’s time to take note of these early signs, not only to anticipate what might happen in this election but to foretell the framework which is likely to define the functioning of our democracy in the decades to follow.

In 1971, Indira Gandhi fought the elections using the slogan ‘garibi hatao’. Although it could hardly have been appreciated then, this ushered in a new form of popular rhetoric that political parties continue to rely on, even today, during election time. Her actions created a centralized political party, changing the nature of the Congress party and, in the process, triggering the emergence of many new political formations. The issues she raised at this juncture eventually set the stage for a confrontation between the legislature and the judiciary, a feature that has lingered on and defined the relationship between these two institutions. In 1990, V.P. Singh initiated the Mandal revolution: his pronouncements at the time of elections and the subsequent decision to implement the recommendations of the Mandal Commission created an OBC conglomerate, which changed the nature of state politics in northern India and eventually ushered in an era of coalition politics at the Centre. Two decades on we can see indicators of another wave of change in Indian politics – one that is steadily questioning, and displacing, settled ways of thinking about elections and political behaviour in India.

 

However, this dimension of our political life has been ignored almost entirely. While there is considerable enthusiasm about the coming elections, the engagement is essentially with the expected outcomes of this event. There is a competition to predict just who will get how many seats, from which region, and how the arithmetic will work out. Who will become alliance partners and who will be in a position to form the next government. However, our ability to read the political mood correctly depends crucially upon our capacity to read the markers of change. In any case, it is the subterranean changes that are occurring in society and manifesting in political behaviour that are likely to leave a more lasting impact upon the system. One must, therefore, begin there and approach the coming elections from that perspective. Instead of fixing our gaze on the outcome, one needs to look at the picture that is surfacing before us.

The past few months have shown a significant change in the political behaviour of the electorate. The most striking sign of this was the electoral success of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the Delhi Assembly elections during December last year. The transformation of a collective mobilization (the Campaign Against Corruption) into a political party that would contest elections, and then win enough seats to form the government (albeit with the support of other parties and individual candidates) was in a way unprecedented. It was an extraordinary event because in the past popular movements existed outside the ‘institutional politics of representation’.1 That is, they could not translate their mass support into electoral seats.

 

Whether it was peasant and farmers’ movements, women’s movements, or issue based movements like the Narmada Bachao Andolan, which spanned over different states, movements against nuclear power plants, movements against corruption led by Anna Hazare himself in Mumbai and other parts of Maharashtra, or mobilizations of NGOs and self-help groups, none of them could dislodge the two major parties – Congress and BJP – or wean the voters away from them in electoral contests. Even when a few of them, for instance, the Samajwadi Jan Parishad (SWJP) in Madhya Pradesh, were successful in winning some seats, it was usually in the elections for local bodies. By and large electoral politics and popular mobilizations occupied parallel but separate domains. The latter could influence electoral politics only to a limited extent; they could affect the fate of a particular candidate but hardly ever shape the electoral results in the region as a whole, or be in a position to challenge the major party/parties in the state.

It was this experience that yielded skepticism and some internal resistance when one group within the Campaign Against Corruption decided to form a political party. Indeed, it is by considering the electoral performance of other social movements and popular mobilizations in the past that one can appreciate what has changed in the interim period. The electoral success of AAP, which was an offshoot of a popular mobilization, marks a sharp departure from the past; and it is perhaps the first major sign of the change that has occurred in the thinking and political behaviour of the electorate – something which in the long run, is likely to have a deep impact irrespective of the success or failure of AAP.

 

The success of AAP is an indicator of the change in the outlook of the voters, for its electoral win cannot be explained in any other terms. It did not rely on the familiar languages of identity politics; nor did it have a clear ideology. In fact, its critics have repeatedly pointed to this fatal flaw, and today when the party is poised to contest in the Lok Sabha elections, they still maintain that AAP lacks ideological coherence. By its own admission AAP is in the process of formulating its views on major social, political and economic issues. So ideology could not have been its winning suit. Nor could its success in Delhi be attributed to the issue on which it campaigned. After all, this was not the first time when the plank of corruption was raised at election time. This issue had surfaced in previous elections and, at times, was sufficient to bring down an identified ‘corrupt’ leader. But on its own it could hardly ever catapult into government a new political formation. So one cannot say that it was the issue that AAP raised or the solution it offered that brought these electoral gains. All one can say is it was ‘the truthful calling for a solution’, to use Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ phrase, that won the day.2

If it is indeed the ‘truthful calling for a solution’ that tilted the balance, then what happened in Delhi elections may not be a generalizable phenomenon; that is, it is not necessary that other social and political mobilizations will similarly be able to convert their support base into votes. But at the same time, political parties can no longer overlook the possibility of that happening. This itself is likely to effect a change in the conduct of political affairs in the long run and may have a bearing upon electoral results over time. In a context where a patron-client relationship has dominated the political sphere and, despite the effort of many NGOs, candidates with criminal records continue to get re-elected, the search for ‘truthful calling’, or sincerity and integrity, does signal something new in the expectations and behaviour of the electorate. This is an element that one has not made space for in our discussion of electoral results. Since a projection of results relies on established, and not emerging, trends, this is an element that remains unaccounted for in most projections of the seat tallies.

 

This, however, is not the only dimension of our political life that is changing. Previously most electoral studies spoke of the apathy of the urban voter; they argued that the vote is essentially a weapon that the rural and marginalized populations use to be counted and heard. But one found that in the last Delhi Assembly elections it was the urban voters who came out in large numbers and actively campaigned and supported AAP. Just what difference the active presence of the urban voter, particularly the young urban voter, will have on this general election remains to be seen, but in the decade to come it is this group that is likely to shape the nature of Indian politics. This is the second terrain of change and like the first, it hints at a long-term shift in Indian politics that is likely to become more visible with time.

Third, and this is another important arena of change, the categories through which Indian politics is conventionally analyzed and electoral behaviour studied are slowly being edged out. Since the 1990s, identity politics has been the dominant frame of reference. Election campaigns as well as forecasts of electoral results operated on the belief that caste and religious identities determine voter preferences. Accordingly, political parties appealed to voters as members of a specific caste or religious community and psephologists too saw these communities as potential vote banks. Their predictions relied heavily on how a specific identity group would vote, which way it would swing, and how that would influence the outcome (the fate of specific candidates and parties).

 

While appeals to these identities have not vanished, we are seeing alternative ways of identifying collectivities and groups within the electorate. If Arvind Kejriwal has reached out to autorickshaw drivers, Rahul Gandhi has met street vendors and railway porters, Narendra Modi sat with the chaiwallas. These acts, each of which addressed a particular occupational group, identified vulnerable groups whose members have shared concerns and needs. Although these may be, at least at this point, only gestures aimed at wooing collectivities, nevertheless they mark the emergence of a new form of class politics. This is not to say that identity politics is a thing of the past, but the fact that the major national parties (Congress and BJP) see these groups as new kinds of vote banks, foretells the direction in which democratic politics is inclined to move.

Groups like autorickshaw drivers or taxi drivers had, even in the past, the capacity to bargain with the government of the day on specific matters of policy (for instance, fare hikes or use of CNG vehicles) but this was by and large a one-off thing. It is only now that they are being viewed as a cohesive group with a perceived shared interest, and one which has the potential of becoming a vote bank, albeit not a traditional vote bank that is constituted around identities of caste, religion or langauge.

 

Over the past two decades, governance has been the buzzword during elections. Yet, when issues relating to development were raised by the UPA, they invariably wove in community identities. The central government initiated policies targeting the development needs of identified minority communities. They were not alone in this. State governments too identified vulnerable groups along caste and, at times, religious lines and made policies to benefit them. Vulnerability of households on the basis of their income, occupation, or even, neighbourhood hardly ever figured. Criteria of this latter kind was sometimes employed, but only after an initial identification on the basis of caste or religion had been made. It is against this backdrop that the present effort, however meagre and symbolic, to identify occupational groups, many of whom are placed at the periphery of the system, is significant, and may introduce fresh ways of addressing issues of development in an urbanizing India.

Although at this moment such gestures appear to be gimmicks that political parties are resorting to, it would be naive to dismiss them summarily as just that. For these ways of trying to reach out to groups has emerged at a time when identity politics is rife with internal contradictions. There is competition and rivalry within the clusters of marginalized groups. We have, for instance, seen groups within the category of Scheduled Castes, such as the Valmiki community in Punjab or the Mangs in Andhra Pradesh, seeking special arrangements and policies for themselves; political parties are also responding to the demands of such groups in a bid to attract sections of the marginalized groups. If governments have tried to target sub-sections by identifying the most marginalized and framed special policies for them, some of these groups have demanded inclusion into a specific category of the marginalized population – ST rather than SC or OBC.

 

In brief, internal group dynamics and competition for limited scarce resources means that categories like the Dalits or OBCs are no longer available as consolidated vote banks. Political parties have, therefore, to reinvent ways of identifying and wooing groups. So even though there are at present only a few incidents where an appeal has been made to occupational groups, such as street vendors or auto rickshaw drivers, these gestures suggest that the study of politics as well as elections will need to reconsider the centrality given to old established categories of religion and caste and incorporate new kinds of groups and collective identities into their analysis.

These elections may also mark a shift in who is able to stand for elections and join the political contest by lowering the cost of entry into politics. Although the 1990s saw the entry of, and subsequently the dominance of new social groups, particularly the OBCs in North India, nevertheless, at the individual level the space for the ordinary person to enter politics has gradually been diminishing. Indeed the cost of entry, in terms of resources, networks, and capacity for engendering or coping with violence, had become too high for most, and this made the political class even more closed and self-perpetuating.

The entry of AAP in the field of competitive electoral politics has to a great extent changed that. It has thrown up a new breed of political aspirants and, even more importantly, shown to those who are active in other spheres of public life that they too can enter electoral politics. Thus far when change was talked about, analysts spoke primarily of the age of the legislators. Entry of new members was linked to their age rather than resources and networks. This election may well be remembered for bringing into the electoral battle, if not the Parliament, a new breed of political leaders with different and somewhat limited resources.

 

The success of AAP has made this possible, but it is not alone in seeking to lower the cost of entry. A while back Rahul Gandhi identified potential leaders from among the young party workers and gave them tickets for assembly elections. He is now interested in holding American style primaries for a few seats. These again are limited gestures and unlikely to dislodge the influence of social and political networks, but nevertheless they do suggest the direction in which democratic politics is slowly being nudged.

This is an election in which political parties are being compelled to reinvent themselves. Usually this pressure surfaces when the competition between parties is intense and the result too close to call. The striking thing about the coming elections is that the compulsion to change (and move away from familiar modes of political discourse) is being felt when election pundits are all predicting a lead for one party. This is perhaps the clearest signal of the changing landscape. It is for us to read these signs and foretell the trends that are likely to prevail in the years to come.