Sunday, Jun 13, 2004
Urban India more polarised
An argument that Verdict 2004 involved a contest between the haves and the have-nots comes up against a standard objection. It is not true, we are told, that the beneficiaries of the new economic policies voted for the National Democratic Alliance. The Telugu Desam Party's defeat in Hyderabad, the Bharatiya Janata Party's poor show in Delhi and Mumbai and the Left's revival in Kolkata are cited as examples of the urban middle classes having shifted away from the NDA.
If the Alliance lost among these sections too, then the explanation of its defeat must surely be looked for in factors other than its economic policy. Or so runs the defence.
A look at the electoral outcome in urban India would appear to support this line of reasoning. The NDA's reversals in urban centres were not just an episodic phenomenon confined to Hyderabad, Delhi or Mumbai. Cities proved to be the NDA's waterloo this time. In 1999, the BJP and its allies did much better in the 74 predominantly urban constituencies than in the rest: they won 56, a success ratio of three out of four. This time the NDA won only 21, a net loss of 35 seats. While in overall terms the NDA retained a little over 60 per cent of its tally last time, its retention of the urban seats was less than 40 per cent.
The United Progressive Alliance and the Left were the beneficiaries. The Congress added 15 seats to its previous tally of 10; the tally of its allies went up by eight seats. The Left too added 10 seats to its tally of five in the urban centres. While a detailed analysis of urban voting remains to be done, there is no doubt that the NDA suffered disproportionate losses in urban India.
But there are two fallacies in jumping from this fact to the conclusion that the election verdict did not reflect popular unhappiness with the NDA's economic policies. It does not really matter, in the first place, whether the urban affluent voted or did not vote for the ruling NDA. The elites are known to be strategic in their voting choices. They could well benefit from a regime and still vote against it for very specific reasons. In a handful of these cases, there could be a revolution of rising expectations. But that is besides the point. The real question is not whether the in-group of the beneficiaries of economic reforms stuck with the BJP. It is whether those excluded from the benefits or at the receiving end of its negative fallouts used their vote to register their protest.
The second and much more basic fallacy is that the outcome in the urban seats does not reflect the voting behaviour of the consumerist middle classes. India's cities are dominated in numerical terms by the working class. While an overwhelming majority of the `middle class' (a euphemism for the privileged and the wealthy) is concentrated in these cities, this class constitutes at best a small minority. It could well be that the NDA lost in the urban areas not because of the disaffection of the middle classes but despite their continued support. The Congress and its allies may have won in the urban areas on the basis of stronger support among the poor and the very poor.
The evidence gathered by NES 2004 suggests that this was indeed the case. There was a class angle to voting in both urban and rural areas. In both cases, the nature of the relationship was the same: the poorer the voter the more likely he or she was to vote for the Congress and its allies, and the more affluent the voter, the more likely to vote for the NDA.
In the rural as well as in the urban areas, the Congress' allies played a crucial role in mobilising the poor and the very poor for the UPA. The Congress on its own does not have a strong class profile at the national level, for its working class profile in States where it fights the BJP is neutralised by an opposite profile in States where it competes against parties of the Left or the bahujans. The BJP on its own is clearly a party that does better as we go up the economic ladder. The BJP's allies help it draw support from the lower classes, especially in rural areas. The social base of the Left shows a moderate class slope in both rural and urban areas.
While the rural and urban areas show a similar class pattern of voting, the intensity clearly varies. Economic division acquires greater political salience in urban India. In villages, the UPA led the NDA by 5 percentage points among the lowest economic group, while the NDA enjoyed the same lead in the highest group. The gap increases as we move from the villages to small towns with population of less than one lakh. The UPA leads by 7 percentage points among the lowest group, but trails by 8 points among the upper middle class.
The most intense class division can be seen in the cities that account for the predominantly urban constituencies. Here the Congress and its UPA allies secure 43 per cent among the very poor as compared to just 25 per cent for the NDA, a lead of 18 percentage points. The UPA leads by 12 points among the poor and two points among the lower middle class. Yet the NDA manages a 14-percentage point lead over the UPA among the urban upper middle class.
There is thus no need to infer the voting pattern of the beneficiaries of the new economic policies from the outcome in some metropolitan constituencies. An analysis of the direct evidence about the voting behaviour of the upper segment shows that the NDA had a comfortable lead among this section of the electorate. If the upper middle class, the highest economic segment of the population, alone were to elect the government, the NDA would have scored a comfortable victory both in the urban and rural areas. If the Congress and its allies managed to match the NDA's vote share, it was because the UPA could offset its losses among the middle classes with strong support from the poor and the very poor.
The NDA's disastrous performance in the urban centres thus could have a meaning very different from what has been presented. It could, in fact, serve as evidence that Elections 2004 saw a protest vote by those excluded from the benefits of the `economic reforms'.
An analysis of the voting behaviour in the Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka Assembly elections, that resulted in two pro-reform regimes of different parties being thrown out, confirms this. The electoral wave against the TDP saw the Congress take a lead across the class divide, but the lead varied dramatically among different classes. The Congress led the TDP by only 6 percentage points among the very poor that used to constitute TDP founder N.T. Rama Rao's traditional vote bank and by a whopping 18 points among the poor that included a large number of marginal farmers. The top two categories that account for a quarter of the State's population saw a very close fight between the Congress and the TDP-led alliances, with the former leading by three points. The TDP did lose votes across the board, but is losses were heavier among the poor and the very poor.
Similarly, the Congress lost heavily among the very poor in Karnataka. Last time, the party won with the help of very strong support among the poor and the very poor. This time the Janata Dal (Secular) managed to take away about 30 per cent of the very poor, while the BJP established a lead among the remaining three segments. The BJP established a comfortable 15-percentage point lead over the Congress among the upper middle classes. The Krishna Government's strategy of courting urban well-to-do classes ensured that the Congress had the worst of both the worlds.
Y.Y.
Copyright © 2004, The Hindu.