Distancing by core voters

The NDA govt at the Centre completes three years in office today. On the occasion, a look at the state of the opposition parties.

Although non-BJP ‘opposition parties’ exist in form, they have become disconnected from their wider social base. They are playing a role that is so lacking in meaning. In the absence of viable opposition, what we now see emerging is a notion of unruly democracy that is being governed in Leviathan style.

This situation reminds one of the concern of Lord Hailsham, a veteran of Conservative cabinet in the mid-1970s in the UK who complained that the British system was becoming ‘an elective dictatorship’, in which the opposition was powerless in the face of strongly partisan government programmes.

Undoubtedly, the opposition parties in India too are rapidly becoming redundant as they are not willing to adopt output-oriented strategy to engage the critical mass on the street to check the abusive exercise of executive power.

Is the idea of responsible ‘opposition’ dying in India? For long, democracy without opposition parties was unthinkable. They were the agents of checks and balances and known for playing the role of democratic vigilantism to ensure the popular accountability of the government. But we are now moving in a situation that suggests that the failure of opposition parties might imply the failure of democracy.

These parties are competing with one another for votes in total ideological vacuum and without being interested in providing alternative frame of politics. As a result, the centrist texture of Indian politics has been replaced by the politics of far-right groups since 2014.

It can be seen in the routing of Congress from the Centre and subsequent state elections particularly in Haryana, Uttarakhand, Assam and in its failure to form government in Manipur and Goa. The defeat of BSP and SP in Uttar Pradesh and poor performance of AAP in the Delhi municipal elections are another case point.
The opposition parties are failing in multiple ways. First, they are increasingly losing their capacity to engage their core social mass who are de-aligning with them in greater number than before, and are also becoming increasingly indifferent to them. In this sense, there is a wholesale withdrawal of core voters from most of the opposition parties.

For instance, Congress is left with no core voters. The BSP has lost its appeal among non-Jatav Dalits in UP. Non-Yadav OBCs and a substantial section of Muslims have changed their allegiance from SP to other parties in the state. In other words, both the core voters and the opposition parties are withdrawing from one another. The relative weight of cohesive voting of different social constituencies has declined.

Second, the leaders of opposition parties are working more in the direction of appropriating more resources from the ruling regime while abandoning their own party and voters. It can be seen in their conspicuous silence on many issues as well as easy movement of leaders from their parent party to the ruling party.
Third, most of the parties have moderated their adversarial classical political/policy stand to adopt the neo-liberal consensus politics. As a result, party differences and left-right-centre opposition do not play a major role. Unlike in the past, most of the parties are not interested in maintaining their distinct identity. They have emerged more ‘coalitionable’ and they try to cohabit with each other.

In this sense, a clear boundary between government and opposition is fast becoming difficult to identify. Moreover, the opposition parties are not willing, or not capable, to offer clear alternative policies to the voters. The idea of Gathbandan and Mahagathbandhan against the ruling party after every election is an offshoot of this changing paradigm of opposition politics. In all probability, this forthcoming opposition unity will drift towards an opposition of form rather than of content.

Be that as it may, the steady decline in the levels of electoral turnout for opposition parties is also because of the effects of generational replacement and trans-patriarchal voting pattern of women. On the one hand, although the older generations continue to engage with the parties with partisan preferences, young voters whose demographic weight naturally increased are getting indifferent towards the parties of their parent’s choice.

Random voting
They are voting more randomly and in an uncertain manner. This randomness of the new generation has put traditional alignment under pressure. The fickle-minded voting not only creates condition for electoral volatility but also turned electoral outcome less predictable. Certainly, India is witnessing a new trend that voters are voting with significantly reduced partisan commitment.

On the other hand, women voters started transcending the patriarchal dictate while exercising their preference for political parties. It was conspicuous in the changing allegiance of Dalit, lower OBC and Muslim women in favour of BJP in the recent UP Assembly elections due to their captured attraction towards BJP’s Nari Shakti campaign, using free gas subsidy through Ujwala Scheme, Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao campaign,

Sulabh Sauchalaya, Maternity relief fund, anti-Romeo squad tantrum, Suraksha Bima Yojna, Sukanya Samriddhi Yojna and so on.

Interestingly, women do not prefer to decide in advance how and to whom they will vote. They start observing campaigns and remain uninterested until closer to the polling day. It simply shows the decline of stable commitment to any party on the part of the women voters.

The opposition parties should introspect as to why their aggregate support is slipping away to the benefit of the right-wing party. They must realise that their style of politics is not in tune with the transformative mass politics and thus their core voters are either retreating towards their own private sphere or changing their loyalties.

This mutual disengagement must be addressed by actively mobilising the electorates on the basis of shared social experiences. It is quite visible that something more than being active during elections is required. The ‘comfort zone’ politics will not help opposition parties survive when the ruling right-wing regime is already on the verge of hijacking the democratic space of India.

(The writer is Associate Professor & Head, Department of Political Science, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad)