by Mohamed Zeeshan
We're only months away from the grandest democratic exercise on earth. On the 31st of May this year, the Lower House of the Indian Parliament (or the 15th Lok Sabha) shall be ending its five year term. On the 1st of June, India would have a new batch of parliamentarians, unless anomalous political complexities were to emerge.
India held its first ever Parliamentary Elections in 1952, and there has never been a more breathtaking political spectacle on show since. But of all the elections gone by in the past, none perhaps have aroused national talk as much as the one that is unfolding this year. A large part of that is because of the advent of the electronic media which, enhanced by the wonders of the internet, has made India far more connected than ever before. There is debate, discussion, even dissent in political public discourse today from all corners of the spectrum.
India held its first ever Parliamentary Elections in 1952, and there has never been a more breathtaking political spectacle on show since. But of all the elections gone by in the past, none perhaps have aroused national talk as much as the one that is unfolding this year. A large part of that is because of the advent of the electronic media which, enhanced by the wonders of the internet, has made India far more connected than ever before. There is debate, discussion, even dissent in political public discourse today from all corners of the spectrum.
Much of that dissent has been directed at the incumbent government. It's a stale tale now, but to call Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's second term a tragedy is an understatement in the eyes of many. The middle class has been disenchanted by rising prices, slowing growth and ghastly scams. Even the Finance Minister's interim budget was received with much distaste in corporate circles recently.
It's yet hard to see if any alternative governments can reverse that trend and charm the electorate, but perhaps anti-incumbency isn't such a bad thing after all. In the great and mature democracies of the West, anti-incumbency isn't quite as unusual as it is in India.
Take the United States for example. Since the election of Theodore Roosevelt in 1901, America has had 11 Republican Presidents out of 19. Take Teddy out of it and you have a more balanced mixture - 10 Republicans and 8 Democrats. In addition, there hasn't been a single President who succeeded his fellow party member since George Bush Sr took over from Ronald Reagan in 1989. And Bush Sr only lasted a solitary four-year term in office. France has an even more marvelous record in anti-incumbency. Only twice has a President been re-elected to the Élysée since the days of Charles de Gaulle. And only Jacques Chirac and Nicholas Sarkozy were of the same party. (That's considering only the Fifth French Republic. Go back further in time and you'll find that no one man ever occupied office for more than one term in decades.)
India, in contrast, has been incredibly homogeneous. Since independence in 1947, the Indian National Congress has been in power for a whopping 54 years out of 67. Even more remarkably, Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the only non-Congress Prime Minister to complete a whole quota of five years in office. And we're talking of the most diverse multi-party democracy on the planet.
There are sundry reasons for the Congress' single-handed dominance of Indian politics. For one, it is the oldest party in the country. Founded in 1885, the Congress established its foundations nationwide well before the nation was even born. It even secured the confidence of the people, through the likes of Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru. Post-freedom and even till date, the Congress remains the only party in Parliament with a presence in every constituency in the country. Even its great rival, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), does not hold that distinction.
To the policy maker, the almost de facto incumbency of a single party is a cause for much headache. In his highly illustrious book The Post-American World, Fareed Zakaria quotes an Indian government official complaining about political pressure. "We have to do many things that are politically popular but are foolish," he says. That might be true of any democracy. But it also is true that the Indian Prime Minister (more so that of the Congress) is more likely to be worried about re-election than a French President. And therefore, more given to populism. On the other hand, Opposition parties who come to power in India are less likely to be populist, unless by design, because they don't quite expect to be re-elected a second time. It's almost like giving it all they've got on the first shot, thereby affording the policy maker greater leverage over his political bosses.
So is anti-incumbency the way to go? You'd think that would be an obvious choice in a country like India where every man has an opinion of his own. It would probably be an even more obvious choice when you factor in the weight of populism in Indian politics. But one could also argue that one of the reasons the Congress keeps getting itself elected time and again is because, in the eyes of the electorate, none of its rivals are as free of controversy, or stable enough to form a government. Maybe what one might be seeing in 2014 will merely be a whiplash from an exasperated middle class, asking its politicians to be smarter. But the Indians are getting smarter. It's only time that their leaders did too.
It's yet hard to see if any alternative governments can reverse that trend and charm the electorate, but perhaps anti-incumbency isn't such a bad thing after all. In the great and mature democracies of the West, anti-incumbency isn't quite as unusual as it is in India.
Take the United States for example. Since the election of Theodore Roosevelt in 1901, America has had 11 Republican Presidents out of 19. Take Teddy out of it and you have a more balanced mixture - 10 Republicans and 8 Democrats. In addition, there hasn't been a single President who succeeded his fellow party member since George Bush Sr took over from Ronald Reagan in 1989. And Bush Sr only lasted a solitary four-year term in office. France has an even more marvelous record in anti-incumbency. Only twice has a President been re-elected to the Élysée since the days of Charles de Gaulle. And only Jacques Chirac and Nicholas Sarkozy were of the same party. (That's considering only the Fifth French Republic. Go back further in time and you'll find that no one man ever occupied office for more than one term in decades.)
India, in contrast, has been incredibly homogeneous. Since independence in 1947, the Indian National Congress has been in power for a whopping 54 years out of 67. Even more remarkably, Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the only non-Congress Prime Minister to complete a whole quota of five years in office. And we're talking of the most diverse multi-party democracy on the planet.
There are sundry reasons for the Congress' single-handed dominance of Indian politics. For one, it is the oldest party in the country. Founded in 1885, the Congress established its foundations nationwide well before the nation was even born. It even secured the confidence of the people, through the likes of Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru. Post-freedom and even till date, the Congress remains the only party in Parliament with a presence in every constituency in the country. Even its great rival, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), does not hold that distinction.
To the policy maker, the almost de facto incumbency of a single party is a cause for much headache. In his highly illustrious book The Post-American World, Fareed Zakaria quotes an Indian government official complaining about political pressure. "We have to do many things that are politically popular but are foolish," he says. That might be true of any democracy. But it also is true that the Indian Prime Minister (more so that of the Congress) is more likely to be worried about re-election than a French President. And therefore, more given to populism. On the other hand, Opposition parties who come to power in India are less likely to be populist, unless by design, because they don't quite expect to be re-elected a second time. It's almost like giving it all they've got on the first shot, thereby affording the policy maker greater leverage over his political bosses.
So is anti-incumbency the way to go? You'd think that would be an obvious choice in a country like India where every man has an opinion of his own. It would probably be an even more obvious choice when you factor in the weight of populism in Indian politics. But one could also argue that one of the reasons the Congress keeps getting itself elected time and again is because, in the eyes of the electorate, none of its rivals are as free of controversy, or stable enough to form a government. Maybe what one might be seeing in 2014 will merely be a whiplash from an exasperated middle class, asking its politicians to be smarter. But the Indians are getting smarter. It's only time that their leaders did too.