In his latest book, Democracy on the Road: A 25-Year Journey through India , global investor Ruchir Sharma writes about his travels across India with a varying contingent of journalists, researchers and others to gaugepublic mood around the various elections held in the past two decades. Excerpts from an interview:
What do you think explains this strong verdict for a return of the Narendra Modi-led government?
For me, the extent of the BJP’s win was a huge surprise. We had in our travels in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal during the elections noted that Mr. Modi was popular. But while there was a saffron surge in West Bengal, there was no indication of a wave in the BJP’s favour in U.P. We found most voters looking to vote along community lines, and the Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party combine seemed to be recovering ground based on this. A look at the six percentage point nation-wide swing towards the BJP suggests that a lot of new voters — youth — voted largely because of Mr. Modi’s popularity rather than on community lines. The BJP also increased its vote share substantially, by 15-20 points, in States where it had lost to the Congress in the Assembly elections. That sort of swing within six months has never happened before in Indian electoral history.
Where does the Congress go from here, having failed to improve significantly on its seat share?
Many of the voters we met suggested they were voting for the BJP because of the Prime Minister’s leadership, but no one named Rahul Gandhi as a reason they were voting for the opposition. It seems to me that the Congress is unable to offer any alternative to the Modi persona. Unless a strong leader emerges who can take on Mr. Modi, or Mr. Modi himself makes mistakes that hurt his popularity, it does not seem that the Congress can make a recovery.
In West Bengal, the BJP has made a major breach in the Trinamool stronghold, and even attracted Left voters. What did you find during your visit?
I can’t remember any State where we have travelled so far where one party has disintegrated and another risen so sharply in such a short span. We went to cover WB and TN elections in 2016, and the BJP’s vote share in Bengal was close to 10–11%. The complete disintegration of the CPI(M) needs investigation.
In Bengal we noticed two big issues: anti-incumbency against Trinamool, which has inherited the strong-arm tactics of the Left, and anti-immigration sentiment, against what many considered an “open borders” policy in parts of Bengal. The BJP has managed to exploit these two, but even then its rise is staggering. Just three months ago, no one gave the BJP a chance.
Did the Left voters vote tactically or did they buy into the BJP’s communal rhetoric in the State?
I think it is a combination of both. Because of the anti-immigrant feeling, even Mamata Banerjee had been forced to change her rhetoric a bit in the past few months. The disintegration of the Left has paved the way for the BJP as well.
How much of this Modi effect would you attribute to his way of communication, the way he uses social media, and the use of messengers like WhatsApp by his party?
In the 1970s, Indira Gandhi had a similar cult-like following. Even some years ago, when you asked people, who do you rank as the best Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi would top the charts. Communication has helped Mr. Modi achieve a similar status. Maybe it tells you a bit about the yearning in many parts of India for a strong, charismatic leader. WhatsApp and social media may be the medium through which the BJP reached out to them, but the ground is fertile for such a narrative. So, it’s about the mood of the nation.
In your book you say that in your 20s you expected that the only way for India to get out of its morass would be through inspired leaders pushing in tough reforms. You mention Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as someone who started out as an economic reformist. But since then, Erdoğan has consolidated power and cracked down on democratic institutions. Is there a danger of something similar happening in India?
I think in India we have followed a very different path. In the book what I try to say is that as a young Indian, my aspiration was to have more economic freedom in this country that had so much political freedom. So I detail how I met Sonia and Rahul Gandhi in the early 2000s and made the case for greater reforms. I discussed emerging markets and how leaders like Putin and Erdoğan were then coming to power and pursuing a reformist agenda — so why not do something similar if you’re looking for a formula to return to government? I got complete radio silence and quickly realised that this did not resonate with them. And when they did come to power, they followed a very different agenda.
My disappointment is that when Mr. Modi first came to power, I was ready to say that he may be an economic reformer and should be given a chance due to rhetoric like “minimum government, maximum governance” and “the government has no business being in business”. That hope quickly faded after demonetisation. In Turkey and Russia, the leaders pursued a lot of economic reforms but soon turned towards consolidating power, and reforms became secondary.
In India on the other hand, I think, for anyone to win elections, they have to be like Bernie Sanders. All parties seem to have a welfare-minded, socialist form of thinking that blurs the line between the Left and the Right. The dividing line seems to be very much along cultural issues — secularism and so on — but on economic issues, the line is blurred. Mr. Modi especially, to try and win back support this year, went further down the “welfarist way” in terms of what he announced in the budget in January.
But isn’t there a distinction between the UPA’s and NDA’s approaches to welfare?The UPA tried a rights-based approach — the Right to Information, Right to Work etc., while the NDA’s was more about redistribution of club goods, through the Ujjwala scheme and so on.
I think there is a distinction, but what I am trying to say is that there is a tendency for each government to come in and launch more schemes without stopping to evaluate existing ones The classic example is MGNREGA, for which PM Modi has just increased the expenditure. No one knows how many centrally sponsored schemes we have; I am told that someone requested an audit and learnt that there were more than 1,000. And this government has just laid them on further.
In Madhya Pradesh last year, during our 27th election trip, I spoke to the district magistrates there. They told me that with a few targeted schemes like the one to construct toilets, which has had a lot of focus, we could get better outcomes. But with so many schemes, how can you expect delivery? And this is why the average voter remains frustrated — so many promises are made but the delivery is so limited.
You talk in your book about how reform-minded politicians don’t always succeed in India. Is there more to governance than just growth — job creation, for example?
I have counted 27 instances in India when a State grew at over 8% across a five-year period under a chief minister. In half of those instances the party lost the next Assembly elections. That’s a high number in any part of the world, although to say they lost because the growth did not result in job creation would be over-simplification.
The point I make in my book is, development is only one factor in an election. In the early 2000s, Chandrababu Naidu would speak to us in a reformist way, but once on the campaign trail he would start describing the welfare schemes he had put in place. In India, the connection between economics and politics is rather weak. Modi seems to get this. He ran on a multifaceted agenda, not just on development, and it worked.
You also emphasise in your book that there have been nomajor changes in India in terms of the reliance on community and caste networks. Why isn’t there a civic consciousness beyond these identities as yet?
First of all, this is a 3,000-year-old system. We cannot expect it to change in such a short span of time. But there is some change — and the more India is urbanised, the faster this change will be. The problem is that the pace of urbanisation is very slow, with 2/3 of the country still non-urban.
Second, there is a sense among each caste and each community that we might as well have our person in power so that he can look after our interests — because the government at large is not able to cater to everyone’s interests.
When I returned to my mother’s ancestral home in Bijnoir to have a conversation with people there about how much had changed, I met the district magistrate, the police superintendent and the jail superintendent — all of whom were from the upper castes. When I asked if this confirmed the view that, ever since Yogi Adityanath became chief minister, the upper castes have benefited far more thanother communities, the jail superintendent’s answer to me was so revealing. He said, when the Yadavs were in power, the Yadavs and Muslims were in good posts and the upper castes were ignored. Now Adityanath is in power, they are ignored and we are in good posts; that is just the way the circle of life moves.
