Economy and identity: Both matter to voters
What matters more to Indian voters: Economy or identity? The state election results on Thursday are likely to reignite this debate. Ever since the American economist Anthony Downs published his 1957 magnum opus An Economic Theory of Democracy, the role of economic ideologies and economic calculations in elections have been a matter of intense debate across the world.
The conventional narrative on economic voting suggests that economic factors and ideologies play a big role in advanced economies such as the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) and less so in developing countries such as India. Yet, the link between economic growth, welfare, and voting patterns in India may be growing stronger over time, some recent studies suggest.
One influential study by the political scientists Milan Vaishnav and Reese Swanson looked at state elections between 1980 and 2012 to find that growth did not matter at all till the 2000s. In the 2000s, governments that delivered higher growth had a greater chance of getting re-elected. However, they cautioned that the link between growth and incumbency was still modest.
A 2017 Mint analysis of 18 major states by this writer and the economist Tadit Kundu arrived at similar results. The analysis showed that all states which witnessed strong pro-incumbency in the 2001-2016 period recorded higher growth during the rule of the incumbent. Economic growth seems to aid an incumbent party’s chances of getting re-elected. But delivering on growth does not guarantee re-election. The same analysis showed that higher growth wasn’t enough for re-election in 40% of the strong anti-incumbency states (where incumbents did not last more than one term).
Economic considerations other than growth performance often matter more to voters. Are the fruits of growth being distributed evenly? Are those left behind by the growth process able to avail government assistance? Are there more jobs in the community?
Results from successive rounds of the nationally representative Lokniti-CSDS postpoll surveys suggest that a key success of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been in convincing voters that its policies enrich all sections of the country rather than just the rich. Even at the height of its popularity during the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress failed to convince voters on this question; 25% respondents in the 2009 survey felt the Congress-led government had benefited all sections but 35% said its policies benefited only the rich. This gap may have widened in its second term (2009-14) when the government faced a number of high-profile corruption cases. But this question was not repeated in the 2014 survey. When a similar question was asked in 2019, 51% respondents said that development over the past five years benefited all sections and only 24% said that it has benefited only the rich.
An analysis of Lokniti-CSDS data by the political scientist Prakash Sarangi shows that the Congress was an early beneficiary of the “welfare vote”; 33% of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) beneficiaries voted for the party in the 2009 elections. Only 17% voted for the BJP. By 2014, the lustre of the old welfare schemes had been lost, and Congress’s lead over the BJP vanished. By 2019, the BJP had surpassed the Congress record in mobilising beneficiaries of welfare schemes, or “labharthis”; 44% of Jan Dhan Yojana beneficiaries and 43% of Ujjwala beneficiaries voted for the BJP, Sarangi’s analysis shows. Less than 20% of such beneficiaries voted for the Congress. Among MGNREGA beneficiaries, the difference between the two parties was narrower, but unlike in 2009, the BJP had a lead over the Congress in 2019.
Sarangi argues that the impact of the “welfare vote” is not lost on the two major parties. Analysing manifesto pledges over the past decade, he shows that the welfare agenda of the Congress and BJP have converged greatly. It is the bottom half of India’s income pyramid which needs and demands government help most. The ability of politicians to meet this demand has become increasingly important.
The convergence of economic policies means that parties need an identity marker to distinguish themselves from others. Caste, language, and religion fill that role. These have their own importance in electoral contests. Yet, identity concerns often tend to be fused with economic issues.
Consider job quotas for instance. A voter is interested in quotas for her community partly because that would improve her community’s standing. But she is also aware that a quota raises her own chances of securing a decent job in an economy where such jobs are extremely scarce. Both community pride and economic interests are at play.
This interplay of economic and identity considerations can be seen in other instances too. If a hydro power project benefits upper castes in an upstream town while displacing tribals downstream, it could lead to social polarisation. The underlying fault line would be economic. When people complain about how certain welfare schemes have benefited a few communities at the expense of others, they are essentially voicing economic grievances.
The electoral battlefield provides a platform to aggregate such grievances just as it provides a platform to aggregate individual aspirations. Caste and community groups play an important role in such aggregation but some of the underlying concerns that bind social coalitions together are economic in nature. For many Indians, economic concerns and community concerns are inextricably linked.
THE CONGRESS WAS A BENEFICIARY OF THE WELFARE VOTE; BUT BY 2014, THE LUSTRE OF THE OLD SCHEMES WAS LOST, AND THE PARTY’S LEAD OVER THE BJP VANISHED