Suhas Palshikar

While the sixteenth Lok Sabha elections are underway, Lokniti colleagues across India are busy with the National Election Study 2014. While on the face of it, the NES 2014 is only a continuation of the long tradition of undertaking election study, this particular NES is not without its share of challenges. Any election study has to respond to the political context and NES is no exception to this norm. Just when elections had started appearing almost routine, the 2014 parliamentary election has thrown up complex questions that students of Indian politics and generally those studying electoral politics will have to address themselves to. Once Lokniti’s post poll is over, we shall be in a position to know which social sections voted for which party and how that has changed from last election. However, we would also be called upon to answer five more questions irrespective of which party/alliance comes to power after May 17th.

Politics surrounding personalities is not new to India. And yet, the current Lok Sabha election would have the distinction of being a leader-centered election in a long time. Not that Indian politics lacked the personality factor ---a large number of states have witnessed rise of leadership as the central factor—but ever since Indira Gandhi disappeared from the scene, no leader has been able to focus on his/her personality during the national elections. Are these elections an exception to this trend? Are we witnessing a going back to personality-oriented politics as the core factor in Lok Sabha elections? How could this happen and what implications does this have for competitive politics?

One could perhaps argue that this development is linked to another crucial factor that is playing an important role of late in India’s elections—the media. This has three dimensions. One is simply the proactive media that is accused of agenda setting; other is the rise of social media and its impact on some sections who also happen to be prominent opinion-makers and the third is the huge –almost frightening—advertisement blitz that was unleashed by at least the two larger parties, BJP and the Congress. In itself, neither of these is a new development. Elections in 1989 saw the emergence of the politics of media advertisements as the mainstay of the campaign; that election also ushered in the ‘new’ electronic medium into an active role. Time has now come when students of electoral politics take this question seriously: What exactly does the media do? Does it shape public opinion? Does it set the political agenda? Does it rig electoral politics by limiting the political rhetoric?

Third set of questions will pertain to the see-saw battle between the role of the state level politics and all-India politics in determining the outcome. Post-1989, most students of Indian politics would agree that state is the platform where political competition actually shapes; the so-called national issues reach the voters only through the filter of the state. It will be interesting to find out what happens to this development. Currently we are receiving conflicting reports about this election being a ‘wave election’ which will obviously wash out the state effect , on the other hand reports about how state level dynamics and configurations are likely to throw up differential outcomes like in last few elections. Does the politics of image making similarly get circumscribed by the state arena? Does the reach and effect of media vary from state to state? More fundamentally, will the federalization of the polity that has emerged since 1989 remain or will it be reversed?

Of late, there has been much discussion in media and some in academia as well, about the reworked relationship between identity issues and emotive issues on the one hand and performance issues on the other. In 2009 parliamentary election, this was observed and later in the Bihar Assembly election this issue resurfaced. In the meanwhile for the last one year, the UPA government has received much criticism over its ‘non-performance’. On its part, the UPA government has always argued that it brought about a host of welfare measures and policies thereby shifting the focus to ‘inclusive growth’, away from an abstract idea of development. So, what is the contribution of performance and welfare policies? Can the politics of polarization be countered by the politics of welfare policies? Are voters concerned with material benefits they get from the government or do they look upon social links as more crucial in making electoral choices?

Finally, what do these elections mean to democratic politics in India? Are they ‘just another’ elections or do they have more significance? In the run up to this election, a wave of ‘new politics’ swept the national capital in the form of the Aam Aadami Party. Its proponents argue that qualitative change in politics is possible. Would these current elections show a glimpse of that qualitative change—if not in numbers, then in terms of the way politics is conducted, political rhetoric is produced, political alternatives are presented?

As students of politics, we at Lokniti will have to be alert to these questions and address them in our analyses. After all, in a representative democracy, elections are a juncture with the citizens engage with politics much more intimately that at any other time. Electoral politics leaves its footprint on the political terrain far too firmly to be easily ignored either by policy makers or analysts. Therefore, our collective ability to grapple with these questions will determine Lokniti’s continued relevance as a group that seeks to connect the empirical to the theoretical.