Irrational exuberance over Indian election

By Hari Sud
Column: Abroad View

Published: April 17, 2009

Women queue up to cast their votes in the first phase of India's general election at a polling booth in the city of Trivandrum in Kerala on April 16, 2009. Nearly 70 percent of voters cast their ballots in the state polls. The elections will take place in five phases across the country.(Photo/Government of India)

Font size:

Toronto, ON, Canada, — Voting in India’s general elections, which began on April 16, will last for another month. However, leaders of the newly minted “Third Front,” a new alliance of assorted leftists and regional parties, are already expressing irrational exuberance over election results.

There are not many issues on which people will vote. The economy has done well. India has been flush with cash with close to US$30 billion pouring in as foreign direct investment and another US$30 billion in remittances from abroad in 2008.

The information technology and the business process outsourcing sectors have been scaling new heights every year for the past 10 years. Merchandise exports have touched the US$150-160 billion mark with additional high margin exports of US$60 billion in software and outsourcing services.

This time India is voting for a leader and not for a party. But are the elections all about personalities? Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, leader of a diverse group of parties with his own party as the largest, has done well. He has consistently delivered 9 percent growth in the past four years and fulfilled India’s dream of being recognized as a nuclear nation. He has doubled India’s defense expenditure to US$29 billion in five years, told China to mind its own business and not harbor ambitions in the Indian Ocean, kept Pakistan busy internally and mended relations with the West. This mild-mannered person has an iron will.

Singh’s opposition is former Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani, leader of the other diverse alliance. The 82-year-old razzle-dazzle crowd pleaser is unfit to take the day-to-day pressures of the job, but refuses to give up his ambition to be prime minister. His popular base is Hindu voters, which are usually split by all parties, making minorities the kingmakers.

India began a new road to progress under his leadership and that of his boss, former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. But Advani’s message is being drowned out by the Third Front and Advani's detractors.

It is the Third Front grouping and a bunch of independent-minded regional leaders that hold the key to the government. The Communists and their fellow travelers are the largest component of this group. The Communists’ strategy is simple – detach India from the United States, attach it to China and become its lackey in the Indian Ocean. Their economic philosophy is different from China’s though. China today has an Anglo-Saxon free market economy; the Communists in India wish to pursue Marxist-Leninist philosophy. If the Communists do well in the elections, it will be a surprise to all.

Other noteworthy personalities hoping to be prime minister are Uttar Pradesh supremo Madam Mayawati, who owns property worth millions of dollars but still prefers to call herself “Dalit,” or downtrodden.

Another rabble-rouser is the extremely wealthy Mulayam Singh Yadav, a former wrestler from Uttar Pradesh who courts the Muslim vote, referring to himself as from a backward caste to grab their vote. He has one simple philosophy – dump computers and information technology and go back to the basics in Hindi. He and Mayawati are both vying for the “Dalit” and Muslim votes, which is not good for either.

Next is the former chief minister of Tamil Nadu, the indomitable Madam Jaya Lalitha. She is facing her archrival, the current chief minister and octogenarian Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader, M. Karunaniddhi. Her chances of success are good. Her opponents are not in good shape as they have used up all their political capital in the last five years in power.

One dark horse and colorful candidate in the race for leadership is millionaire Lalu Parsad Yadav. He is the current minister of railways, and a very successful one. His previous record as chief minister of Bihar state, followed by proxy rule by his wife, has been termed regressive for the state. In order to wipe out that legacy, he has made Indian Railways his most admired undertaking.

There is another most unlikely candidate, who is not officially in the running but his family wishes him to be leader of the party and by default prime minister. He is the dull and inactive son of the present majority leader Sonia Gandhi. The family wishes Rahul Gandhi to be prime minister because of his genealogy. Otherwise he has no qualifications. The job is far beyond his capability or training. The country is better off without him.

There are other dark horses within the ruling and opposition parties who are running to make the cut. It would be difficult for anyone other than the two main parties to stitch together a group to form a government, however. Both parties are on the defensive during the electioneering over past failures.

In all 720 million voters, more than 45 registered parties and in excess of 4,000 candidates are in the running for 545 Parliament seats. With about 1 million election booths and one month of polling, this is the largest democratic election in history. It is the equivalent of holding elections in all of North and South America and all of Europe together with Russia.

Hot heads and power abusers are present everywhere in the world. Dirty tricks in such a large electorate are not uncommon, but the combined dirty tricks in these countries are far more than in India. Tamper-proof electronic voting machines are ensuring fewer tricks during voting.

Indian diversity produces fragmented results. This was true in the last two and it will be true again. But ultimately these diverse people come together to form a government.

Crooks have also entered the fray. The last Parliament had 125 members with criminal records. Film actors and actresses, cashing in on their screen popularity, have followed the crooks into the fray. This time around businessmen, bankers and sportsmen have also thrown their hats into the ring.

Election violence by Maoists or other hot heads is difficult to stem, but violence has not deterred people from voting or governments from either retaining or handing over power. That is an indication that the general public does not subscribe to violence.

It is the Indian Election Commission that deserves praise. This exercise requires an administrative set-up bigger than the state bureaucracy of California. Elections are kept honest by following strict rules. These rules also apply during the election campaign. Officials are removed summarily if found wanting. Politicians not following the rules are jailed. Varun Gandhi is one example, who spent 20 days in jail for delivering incendiary speeches against Muslims.

In spite of all these precautions, Indian voters cast their votes according to caste, creed, status, image, genealogy, ethnicity, religion and language. This goes for the poor people as well as the middle class. The wealthy always vote for the candidate who serves their interests. But it is the vote of the poor masses that decides the election results. That is why there are so many “Dalit” candidates in the fray. Ultimately a coalition will be stitched together to govern.

(Hari Sud is a retired vice president of C-I-L Inc., a former investment strategies analyst and international relations manager. A graduate of Punjab University and the University of Missouri, he has lived in Canada for the past 34 years. ©Copyright Hari Sud)