Why Indian politics feels devoid of issues

From unemployment to climate change, nothing that matters reflects in political discourse because status quo is convenient

One of the reasons for water scarcity in India’s hill states is climate change: The amount of rainfall and snow the hills get has reduced. This is not a projection, but a lived reality. Yet nobody seems to care. Climate change was not an election issue in Himachal Pradesh or Uttarakhand.

Some say people are too busy trying to eke out a living to care about complex policy issues. In that case, unemployment and inflation should be big issues, but we don’t hear much about them in Indian political discourse.

Why don’t people put enough pressure on politicians so that they are forced to present competing plans on how they will combat air pollution? I didn’t see this become an issue in the recently held municipal elections in Delhi, held very much during the pollution season.

If you ask politicians, they say people don’t care about these issues enough to influence votes. If you ask voters, they say politicians don’t care about these issues. It becomes a chicken and egg question.

The trap of identity politics

So what do voters care about, according to politicians? Caste, religion, freebies and access to power. In my election travels, I have asked voters about this, and they blame politicians. The result is that the important issues are relegated to the pages of the manifestos nobody reads. That these manifestos are released a day or two before polling day tells you how much our politicians think issues matter.

The old explanations for this used to be that India is not literate and educated enough for the public to be involved in complex policy issues. That is nonsense: There is a large critical mass of Indians educated, interested and able to engage in matters of public policy.

If in 2010 someone told you that India would see a massive anti-corruption movement demanding a law for a new ombudsman, you would have laughed. Yet that is what happened in 2011. Similarly, you could have been dejected in 2011 that women’s safety is not a political issue in India. Yet in 2012, it became one, so much so that women’s safety became an election agenda in 2013-14.

Public opinion needs a catalyst

Climate change, air pollution, quality of education, the need to increase public spending on health, the need for a data privacy law, and even a re-look into the misuse of special laws — all of these and some more can become big public issues. All they need is a catalyst. The catalyst could be a party, a leader, a non-profit, or the media.

Sadly, nobody seems to want to try. People have decided that we the people don’t care. Nobody wants to bell the cat. Walking from Kanyakumari to Kashmir, from the southern to the northern tip of the Indian peninsula, Rahul Gandhi has wasted his effort in abstraction. He has gone from the philosophical to the transcendental.

The word ‘leader’ means someone who leads. Our politicians will have to have faith in the people to start setting the agenda, start talking about things that really matter, and make them the centre of our politics.