It's not unusual to do a post-mortem after a massacre, and so the forensics have begun after the electoral carnage of the 3rd of December. The hindsight morticians, of all hues, have started their analysis of what went wrong with the opposition carcasses littering the battlefield in five states: EVMs, caste, Hindutva, "panauti" barbs, tribals, in-fighting, corruption, electoral bonds-it's an endless list which shall keep the pundits occupied till it's time for the next blood- letting in May next year. Not one to be discouraged by my lack of expertise in this field, however, I would like to add my two bits to the autopsy.
Not much attention has been paid so far on the impact of the behaviour/ preferences of the first-time voter (FTV) on electoral outcomes since 2019. This is surprising given their increasing numbers. According to available figures there were 80 million (8 crore) FTVs in 2019, and the estimates for 2024 are 150 million, or 15 crores ( NEWS18 report dated 31.8.23, based on ECI estimates). That is an almost twofold increase between two elections. Even if we discount the 2024 estimates by 25%, even then FTVs will form a sizeable proportion of total voters.
FTVs comprise between 10% and 15% of the total electorate, perhaps more than most castes or religious denominations. They constitute a separate and distinct cohort, with their own problems, aspirations, preferences and mental make-up. You would expect that all major political parties would be aware of this, and that they would cater to them specifically in their manifestos, as they do for all other electorally significant blocs. Especially as available data shows that FTVs have a significant influence and impact on election results.
A 2014 analysis by IndiaSpend had concluded that this youthful segment had catapulted the BJP to power in the five states with the highest proportion of young voters. Below is a table indicating the five states which had added the most number of FTVs between 2014 and 2018, and the number of Lok Sabha seats in each:
STATE FTV ADDED (IN LAKHS) LOK SABHA SEATS
Bihar 61.33 40
WBengal 55.02 42
Rajasthan 43.45 25
Maharashtra 41.70 48
U.P. 39.74 80
TOTAL 241.26 235
It is significant to note that this accounts for about 43% of the total seats in the Lok Sabha.
Consider now another set of statistics. In the just concluded elections to five states (where the BJP won three by sizeable margins), the vote share of the BJP has actually increased substantially over the 2018 figures: Rajasthan by 3.69%, Madhya Pradesh by 7.66%, and Chattisgarh by 13.37%; even in Telangana (which it lost) its vote share has gone up by 9%. This is a psephological puzzle because the general consensus is that Modi's brand equity is no longer as strong as it was in 2018-19, that the appeal of Hindutva has peaked, and that economic issues such as price rise and unemployment have begun to bite. What then is the generic explanation for the party's phenomenal rise in vote share in 2023?
There is a distinct possibility that the answer could lie in the hitherto ignored First Time Voter. In an interesting article, The Seven Sins of New India by K. Jayakumar, published in The New Indian Express on the 25th of November this year, postulates that the young generation of today (read FTV), "with no exposure to an earlier ethos of public life, begins to believe that what it sees today is normal." And what this generation sees today is listed out by Jayakumar as the "seven sins of new India." These are: Inequality before the law, vindictive vehemence, intolerance to criticism, corruption, doublespeak, window dressing, and the baggage of secularism. These seven sins comprise the new normal and have changed the idiom of public life and polity completely.
I find this a fascinating thesis, one which makes eminent sense. Just step back and consider- the FTV of today was only eight years old in 2014, he was thirteen in 2019. These are impressionable ages, the crucible when values, behaviour, beliefs and prejudices are formed. This generation has grown up in the Modi years and has seen nothing but the seven deadly sins in operation, carpet bombed by media and party propaganda to believe in this right wing ideology and that Modi is the Vishwaguru. They are creatures of this new toxic environment, and their value systems can only align with this new reality, having experienced no other one. I, for one, therefore would be very surprised if they did not vote for the BJP in elections, almost as a bloc. This thesis brings together all the anecdotal data and statistics mentioned above, and may go some way in explaining the BJP's continued appeal and the increase in its vote share. The FTV may not be the only explanation but it certainly merits a serious look. And the beauty of this phenomenon is that with each incremental year of this regime, their numbers will keep increasing by a few millions, providing the BJP an ever increasing constituency of programmed supporters. There can be no worse news for the Opposition.
I may be wrong (I usually am in such matters), but can the Opposition continue to ignore the First Time Voter? He/she may be their ticket to ride.
You may well have hit the nail on the head.
ReplyDeleteAn army of brain-washed youth bombarded day in and day out by a braying media and developing through an education system which espouses the same blatant and dyed in saffron line of thinking queuing up to hang the other when they hit the EVM button.
"Phansi" should be a foregone conclusion.
In M.P., Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, Congress Party has almost retained its vote share. BJP’s vote share has increased whereas there is reduction in share of smaller parties and independents (Others). That means BJP has been able to attract the votes of the Others group. New voters alone cannot explain the success of BJP in these states. The pattern of voting suggests that the hold of Modi brand over the people has been increasing over the years.
ReplyDeleteI have nowhere stated that the FTV alone explains the increase in the BJP vote share, but that it can go some way to explaining it. Some surveys and anecdotal data seem to be pointing in that direction. It's an area the Opposition shd be looking at closely.
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DeleteLokniti CSDS study states that in 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the youth (voters aged 18-25 years) had voted decisively in favour of the BJP. The party’s vote share among young voters (34%) was 3 percentage points higher as compared to its overall vote share. In 2019 BJP’s vote share increased from 31% to 37%, but it had higher support among the youth - 41%. Thus, BJP has been attracting the youth vote in higher proportions than the other parties since 2014.
ReplyDeleteGen Z have been nutrified on a pernicious diet of majoritarianism, uniformism and religious intolerance, with the seven sins garnishing the unwholesome feed. It seems inevitable for them then, to head hard right upon turning 18 in 2024, with or without Google Maps. Xenophobic influences on the route to adulthood will further ossify their impressionable minds against alternatives, and the road to the election booth will seem uncluttered of choices. The opposition alliance - what is left of it - must examine the incidence of this entrant class of voters upon its election prospects as Mr. Shukla cautions. Of course the FTV is only a unitary vote basin. There are other catchments of age groups, gender, class, caste, religion, that determine margins of electoral victory and defeat. Mr. Shukla has caveated at the outset as well as at the end that this is a theory coterminous with more. Mr. Sahu’s follow-up comment concurs with the blog emphatically, evidentially and statistically. It baffles then why the first salvo was fired at all.
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ReplyDeleteOne recalls the success of SOCHI Winter Olympics 2014 and then the western media going after Putin blaming him for squandering scarce resources of his ‘poor’ country BUT one of the prominent and saner comments stated in all simplicity, ‘YOU CAN’T FAULT HIM FOR BEING SUCCESSFUL’. The present commentary resonates somewhat similar though mercifully the tone and tenor this time is not downright Anti-Modi.
ReplyDeleteIf FTV is as big an influencing factor as is sought to be made out, no one stopped the opposition in demonstrating the values it espouses which the FTV is allegedly ignorant about. The opposition had ample opportunity to showcase the same in the states it ruled and still rules, where too sizeable population of FTVs reside. It is not too late. They can do so even now. In this era of ICT, social media platforms and others will spread their magical performance amongst the FTVs as well. Go to any state which is currently in the hands of the constituents of I.N.D.I.A. and see how it/what is being practiced. Lesser said the better. No hopes.
It is advisable to look at another vote block which emerged by universalisation of benefits of government welfare programmes in place of hitherto preferential eligibility system based only on caste and sub-caste etc that was sought to be brought back through caste census. Thankfully Bharat has learned its lessons and learnt it well; in fact well enough to teach to politicians too.
In the opposition’s search for that magical formula which can bring them back to power at the centre, with or without any significant programme or plan to take the country from the point of electoral victory onwards (I am deliberately avoiding using the term ‘forward’), they have often missed what people really want.
Let us not lose sight of internal party democracy that presently exists in BJP and to an extent in AAP. Free flow of ideas and analytics in democratic set-up that is a natural consequence of internal democracy makes them stronger by the day. THIS IS THE SIGNLE FACTOR X that differentiates the two sides. Nothing else. For a strong democracy we all want for our beloved country, internal democracy in each electoral party is the beginning point.
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ReplyDelete"they held rule and were arrogant in what they did,
ReplyDeletebut after a time it was as though that rule had never been.
had they been just, they would have had a just reward,
but through their tyranny time turned against them with disaster and distress.
fate spoke to them using its silent tongue:
this is your just reward; time cannot be blamed"
# avaybhai, the FTV perpetual motion machine is constrained by the first and especially the second law of thermodynamics. energy cannot be created; some amount of energy is converted to heat. and if heat is not doing work then this goes towards increasing randomness, entropy.
ReplyDeletea tendency to believe false information to be correct after repeated exposure is known in cognitive psychology as the illusory truth effect. when truth is assessed people rely on whether the information is in line with their understanding, or alternatively, whether it is familiar. repetition makes information easier to process than new, fresh information, which has to be processed, applying logic, reason. familiarity can and does overpower rationality.
the post 1947 frisson petered out by the end of the sixties, seventies; and that demographic which had done well out of the raj and had expected to do even better from hegemony found their progeny queueing I-20 in hand to be let into yankeestan, inglistan. likewise green revolution prosperity - free electricity, subsidised diesel, subsidised fertiliser, pesticides, low wage-cost migrant labour, the cream being MSP - imploded when individual holdings, through sub division, rendered unviable anything other than IELS and queueing to be let into canada. similarly, the workers paradise that class struggle kerala transmogrified into found its outlet in west asia's boom after the 1973 oil crisis.
now, with draw-bridges being pulled up across anglosphere, and escape to arabia never having been an option for much of bimaru and the cow belt, for our much celebrated demographic dividend - heat that is not doing any work can only lead to entropy.
those celebrating a putative glory underpinned on the solid foundation of poetic license evident in epics and sagas may find ramrajya like energy cannot be created
Brother George!
ReplyDeleteThe FTV comprises the gamut of first time voters from all social and economic stratas, of age 18 till 23.
The theory offered by Avaybhai is an uncomplicated one. It suggests that the FTV is one possible bloc that the ruling regime derives its election ballast from. And because this class is rising unstoppably - as Sahubhai has helpfully provided the numbers and percentages of - till the FTV continues to hitch itself with the ruling party, it will be in pole position to form the government after every State and Centre election.
Your thermodynamic allegory of the restiveness in youth appears unconnected to Avaybhai’s theory of electivity. Your compendium on the illusory truth extracted from the tomes of cognitive psychology mystifies more than it clarifies its applicability upon youth voting trends. Your expounding of the labour exodus and brain-drain in the sixties and seventies is unable to relate itself with Avaybhai’s summation of election psephology.
The subjects of demographic dividend and Ramrajya, or good governance presumably, again do not seem to string up to the strategy of winning elections, which is the core of the blog. Else I have in my imbecility misread you catastrophically, and woe betide me if so.
Is the oposition saying anything worth 5 paisa? Young generation is updated. Of they are happy with Modi it means all unemployment claims of opposition are lies. Let opposition work and claim votes
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