Will the national elections entrench the Bharatiya Janata Party, weaken it, or displace it? That is the question implicitly raised by the publication of When India Votes at the present time.
Why do opinion polls in India fail to provide reliable guidance? For one thing, it isn’t easy to select a sample for polling. A sample size of 1,000 suffices in the West, but there is no consensus about the right size and character of a reliable sample in India — “70% of the electorate resides in areas (that are) inaccessible and media-dark,” say Jaishri Jethwaney and Samir Kapur.
Second, Indian research agencies depend on responses from village leaders, whereas the leaders themselves (let alone the villagers) may later vote differently — how we Indians respond to questions is often influenced by our perception of the status of the interviewer.
Vested interests
Third, there are now “vested interests sponsoring opinion polls, allegations of data fudging, (and) market researchers who... are not necessarily experts in gauging the dynamics and undercurrents of elections.”
Then there are last-minute inducements by various political parties, which can change the final vote, as can slogans and mantras which influence people in our country more than in almost any other country.
Finally, publicity gimmicks can sway votes, because our people often go along with whatever they come to believe is likely to be popular.
When India Votes: The Dynamics of Successful Election CampaigningJaishri Jethwaney & Samir KapurRupa₹250
That raises the issue of the role of media in elections. It is an “open secret that parties and candidates spend huge sums on paid advertising, which is usually thousands of times more than the ECI [Election Commission of India] ceiling, but those who are supposed to question this turn a blind eye to it.”
However, the well-financed India Shining and Bharat Nirman campaigns backfired for BJP and the Congress respectively in 2004 and 2014.
A major malady
Advertising is one thing, ‘paid news’ is another. That has become one of the maladies plaguing Indian media today, claim the writers. So the Election Commission’s recommendation that paid news be made a criminal offence is no surprise. But it isn’t a surprise, either, that the recommendation hasn’t been implemented.
The biggest culprit, the use of black money, is now compounded by the BJP pushing through changes which mean political parties can receive unlimited funds from abroad, from companies, and from individuals.
And what about Hindutva? Apparently, that played a role in the last elections primarily because of the promise of governance and development. In those matters, the nation has been disappointed.
So it remains to be seen whether even a brilliant election campaign will only kill faster the BJP brand because that has not delivered ‘achhe din’ for the average Indian, and has instead grown the nexus of corporate-criminal-politics.
When India Votes: The Dynamics of Successful Election Campaigning ; Jaishri Jethwaney & Samir Kapur, Rupa, ₹250.
