Elections are being centered around individuals: Sanjay Kumar - Livemint

Saturday’s assembly elections are one of the most bitterly fought battles for control of Delhi; the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), both of which have campaigned for a decisive majority after the December 2013 polls delivered a hung assembly, will know by Tuesday which way the capital has voted. In an interview ahead of the vote, Sanjay Kumar , political analyst and director of the New Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) and author of Changing Electoral Politics in Delhi: From Caste to Class, talks about the underlying trends in the election and the prospects of the three main contestants. Edited excerpts:

The quality of discourse in this election campaign has hit a new low. As a political analyst how do you see this?

It has all started in the last couple of years and it is because of elections being centered around individuals—remember some time back in Gujarat when the election was centered around Narendra Modi and also the 2014 Lok Sabha elections centered around Modi. It is precisely because of this reason;. because (the) election is centered around individuals..,this is what comes out of the election campaign.

Look at Delhi assembly election; not being biased, but I would say AAP did not come up with all the time attacking BJP. At least in this election they started on a positive note, saying this is what we are going to do, etc. It is the BJP which started (it) because they knew...that BJP as a party was stronger compared with AAP but they were facing the challenge of (lacking) the individual who could match the popularity of (AAP leader) Arvind Kejriwal ....and they wanted to target him. In order to target an individual you have to go lower. That is what I think spoilt the entire mood of the campaign and what is coming out in the newspapers for the last four days is really distasteful.

If you look at all the AAP hoardings and the BJP hoardings (they) were positive in a sense, some critical hoardings were there but that you have to be if you’re contesting an election. Last one week has spoilt the entire mood of the campaign and it is only personal.

In many ways AAP has practised a different type of politics that took the city by storm in 2013. Do you feel that challenged the BJP as a different party, they did not have the tools to tackle him so they tried to attack him.

Look at when the BJP was contesting against the Congress, nationally or in some other state, they would keep saying it is a drawing room party in the sense that the party leaders are separated from the workers and there is no connect with the masses. It is only in Delhi that they faced the challenge from a party that was not working from the top but a party that was drawing strength from the ground level. AAP adopted a strategy which was very different compared with other parties. They were actually on the ground and getting strength from there. Clearly there is a different strategy with the AAP compared with any other party and that has actually unnerved the BJP because they couldn’t imagine that the support will be so strong on the ground level and especially among communities.

If we look at sections of voters, AAP is very strong among lower-class colonies, slum clusters. For any rallies, etc, BJP party knows well that this crowd of 10,000 or 20,000—how they managed to get this crowd. Though we know BJP is not drawing a large crowd in their rallies, even if there is a crowd we know that this crowd is not a natural crowd that has come to the rally on its own. But the AAP supporters are spontaneous and more than us, the BJP knows it well that the crowd which the AAP is pulling, they are not paid workers but volunteers who are actually working for the party.

Going to your book, now Delhi is more complicated because it does not follow traditional voting patterns. Has class become a part of the electoral choice which did not exist previously?

It’s not only about electoral choices. Class is a dividing line in our day-to-day life. Whether you come to office by car or by metro, it is not about convenience, it is about class. Your voting behaviour or political orientation getting divided by or getting sharply polarized on your class lines is an indicator of how class-conscious large sections of Delhi voters are. Always the reference to where do you live—if somebody says locality Mayur Vihar, Patparganj, Rohini and the follow-up question is MIG (middle-income group), LIG (low-income group) or HIG (high-income group), people would be very proudly saying HIG. That is a strong reference point in our day-to-day lives and is used as a dividing line between people classes.

That is getting reflected in politics also. If people are living in one locality, I think caste and regional distinctions are getting blurred in their voting preferences.

How much of an impact will this bottom of the pyramid, lower class play a role in this election?

In terms of numbers, they are in large numbers. While we don’t have an official estimate, roughly in the range of 35% voters would come in this category called poor sections. Turnout is going to play a very crucial role, while the rich form 17-18% of the voter base and there is a very big middle class (of) 40-45%.

If the average turnout in the last election in Delhi was around 64%, the lowest bottom of the pyramid turnout would have been 40-45%. So there is a huge gap in the turnout. Factors that don’t motivate them to turn out to vote include: while EC (Election Commission) requires establishments to close, but look at (workers at) construction sites, etc. They don’t get a paid holiday. Lack of identity proof would be another reason.

Is it a lot to do with the migrant story of Delhi and the evolution of class? Is that also contributing to the voting pattern?

It matters because there are about 17-18 constituencies where migrants are in sizeable population and when I say migrants I am considering only Purbanchalis. And when you say sizeable number, 20-25% is a sizeable number. Look at the pattern of ticket distribution where every party now keeps some quotas for Purbanchalis to be given tickets.

What do you think will the impact be if the AAP wins?

If the AAP comes to power, besides public policy, one big debate will be Centre-state relations. Kejriwal will keep demanding statehood for Delhi. He would say I am not being able to do this for Delhi because of relations between the Centre and state. But the BJP is now trying to say that if they have a government in the Centre and state, it is an easy way to develop your own state. About public policy, he will have to have a balance. He can’t be a Congress which has been saying all the time that they are with the poor. AAP knows that it will draw huge support from poor...but they have to keep an eye on how they would keep some of the promises that they have made. Water and electricity would be good enough for them. At the same time, they cannot forget about the middle class, the aspirations, flyovers, malls, etc. They have to have a balance, they have to keep an eye on the big middle class.

A high turnout or low turnout, which scenario will be better for which party?

There has been a big debate in the last few years if a higher turnout reflects the anti-incumbency mood or not. If you put up all the election turnout in the last 30-40 years and look at what has happened in terms of electoral verdict—there has been no relationship at all that high turnout means government getting voted out. That has been the history.

Since Lok Sabha elections, there is a clear pattern. Higher the turnout benefits the BJP because the middle class is voting more in numbers now. They have visualized themselves as not sharing political power for the last 15 years when the Congress has been in power because the Congress has always said that they are the government of the poor. The middle class have always been a little disenchanted because they feel that this is not their government. If you look at the middle class in urban areas, they think this is our government. So middle class turnout seems to have increased in the last couple of years. In the Lok Sabha elections there were 70 Lok Sabha constituencies where the turnout increased by 15% or more. Of these 70 constituencies, the BJP and its allies won 67 of them. We have analysed that in those constituencies where the turnout was the same or went down by a couple of percent, the BJP strike rate was less than 50% while in the previous scenario it was 97%. That was the relationship in Haryana and Maharashtra, not as strong as the Lok Sabha but a clear pattern. Higher the turnout greater the vote for voting out the ruling party.

But in Delhi, there is no ruling party. The BJP is defined as the ruling party so higher turnout would go in favour of the AAP. If we go by the nature of the campaign, in all the campaign and rallies, AAP is drawing a larger crowd than the BJP. If there is a high turnout, it would be because the lower economic class would be turning up in large numbers. That is the class where the level of enthusiasm is also more because large number of middle class seem satisfied that Modi is in power. Being in Delhi they feel complacent.

Is it just another bad news for Congress or does it go beyond it?

It does not go beyond that because if frankly, they also know it’s a losing battle that they are fighting. The bad news for the Congress would be if their tally goes down from 2013. If they manage to get about 7-8 seats, it would be a good situation. Their vote share is going to go down, this time they may go down to 15-16% but since the votes are concentrated, they may win four to five seats.

The migrants bring in a certain mercenary attitude defined by their immediate interest which is not here but in their domicile to where they belong. So, are they more open to sops compared with when one goes out to campaign in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar?

The issues which has been picked by AAP which is reducing water and electricity prices, this connects to day-to-day life of common man and this does not include the top 20-25% of the economic class…talk to the lower sections of the society and they would compare bills of every month and say for instance a particular month it was more by Rs.200. For them this jump is a big thing and to them this issue is very appealing. The whole notion is about saving, if they pay less on these issues they would be able to save more.

These migrants are not here to settle in Delhi. The whole idea is to earn something and send it back. We know that there is a huge market for that. We did ask this question in one of our surveys in Delhi that if you get a similar kind of work opportunity back in your home, will you be willing to return back. A very large proportion of migrant voters, 65-66%, said we will be willing to go back. So, it has a connection that everything will finally ends to how much if the government is able to introduce reforms, will it make the day-to- day life easy.

Does the pattern of urbanization perpetuate the class divide that we are seeing?

If you look at the nomenclature, now things are changing because of how the city is expanding. 20 years back when someone said that I live in Patparganj, the immediate reference would be, ‘Oh, Yamuna Paar’ which would instantly refer to the lower income class…but now since the city has expanded much beyond Patparganj, now this nomenclature has disappeared. Since the city has expanded and it has expanded 10 kilometers down the border, Patparganj is developing into a middle class colony. This expansion of city also has the notion of expanding different classes of people and largely the people who belong to the lower income class are being pushed out of the city. If you try and look out at the map and plot where are the migrant workers most of them are in eastern Delhi where they came and settled in the 1970s to 1980s. There is a settlement pattern to some extent. If the city is expanding, the poor and the lower class people are shifting out whereas the dominant, the rich and the middle class are occupying the central part. Look at the Punjabi Khatris, look at where they are settled because they are the oldest in Delhi. If you look at them, they are all centered around Central Delhi and they are synonym to upper middle class voters. Large number of them would overlap.

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