1. April 12, 2014
India Takes to the Polls: An Interview with
Matthew Rudolph
http://journal.georgetown.edu/2014/04/15/india-takes-to-the-polls-an-interview-
with-matthew-rudulph/
Matthew Rudolph, Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of
Government at Georgetown University, sat down with
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2. the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs to discuss his recent
research and insights into India’s nationwide 16th Lok Sabha general
election, which began on 7 April 2014 and continues through 16 May
2014.
GJIA: What factors set Indian election cycles apart from
other global democratic processes, and what specifically
makes the 16th Lok Sabha elections unique from previous
elections in Indian history?
MR: We often think of India less frequently because it is a younger
democracy than many European and American ones, but 870 million
voters—the largest democratic exercise on the planet—make it a
serious point of gravity in global democracy. The electoral process in
India is countrywide and top-down. It is not regulated at the state level
like it is in the United States, and it has been all-electronic since 2004.
We think of India as a poor, developing country and— rightly—as
having challenges to infrastructure and modern amenities from the
household level all the way up to ports, roads, and rails, but in the
exercise of the democratic franchise, it is far ahead of the United
States. In India, the poor vote in much greater numbers than the
middle class and the rich, the reverse of what we see elsewhere,
particularly the United States. Very high voting percentages compared
to the United States and other places, and a very active election
commission, help ensure the integrity of the voting process. People
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“In terms of economic
policymaking and its
effect on overall
economic
performance and how
that plays into the
election, recent slow
growth has meant
fewer jobs, less
satisfaction, and more
grievances, and those
are piling onto other
issues.”

3. sometimes note instances of violence or vote-rigging in Indian
elections, but when you have an electorate of that size, the outcomes
are less likely to be tainted by a few of these instances. Given the
difficulty of regulating anything in India, from traffic to food safety,
the fact that elections go as well as they do is a testament both to the
political culture of the country—the fact that people are committed to
elections, take them seriously, and consider them legitimate—and to
the efficacy of the election commissions.
GJIA: You recently returned from a trip to India. What was
the nature and intent of your visit?
MR: The main purpose for the trip had to do with an award my
parents were getting, but since I was there I thought I would do some
research of my own. I had several meetings, the most interesting of
which was at the Secretariat of the Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of
the Indian Parliament. The Rajya Sabha is akin to the United States
Senate, but much less consequential in its legislative role and
indirectly elected [rather than] by voters. I am doing a research project
on political symbolism in the parliament building itself, which is
associated with a larger project on the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP), so I went to the Secretariat to get information,
access to their archives, and permission to do photography and
interviews. I also went to the informal campaign headquarters of the
Congress Party, where we actually have a Georgetown student on leave
this semester working in a hands-on and consequential role on the
campaign. I spoke for 45 minutes with the Minister of Rural
Development, a loyalist of the Ghandi-Nehru family and Congress
Party member who is also an independent thinker—you could think of
him as the Nancy Pelosi of India. We talked about campaign strategy
and priorities for the Congress Party, and it is an unusual fact of his
personality that he could be cheerful discussing this because the
situation for the Congress Party [going into the election] is pretty
grim.
GJIA: How has India faired economically, politically, and
socially under the coalition government the Congress Party
has headed since its election in 2004 and reelection in
2009? How has this recent political history shaped the
issues most important to the current election?
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4. MR: The Congress Party probably would not have done well in this
election even if it had managed to keep the economy going at
pre-2008 levels. Two rounds of incumbency [have led to] voter
fatigue. However, it probably would not have suffered as much as it is
likely to. In terms of economic policymaking and its effect on overall
economic performance and how that plays into the election, recent
slow growth has meant fewer jobs, less satisfaction, and more
grievances, and those are piling onto other issues. The most
consequential issues hurting the Congress are accusations of
corruption and an inability to respond to [both] these accusations and
actual instances of corruption in a way that suggests the party has
internal dynamism and resilience. The corruption itself, of course, has
a secondary effect of dampening domestic and international
investment enthusiasm and economic dynamism, hurting the
credibility of the government and threatening the sense that it is
accountable. Even during the United Progressive Alliance, the first
Congress-led coalition running from 2004 to 2009, there was not as
much dynamism and economic policymaking as there should have
been. The main reason for this is that in the first two or three years the
Congress was supported by a group of left-wing Marxist and
Communist parties that were opposed to energetic reform. The
Congress should have jettisoned those partners, and they probably
could have. They should have called a snap election in 2005, a year
after they were voted into office, when they were very popular, and
gotten rid of those coalition partners. But the tactical and strategic
mindset of Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, the prime minister
and head of the party, respectively, were too conservative. Once you
hit 2009, the global economic crisis, a slowdown of global demand,
and problems with the domestic Indian business cycle became
external to India and the party’s ability to control them. There are
always going to be shocks in the global economy and oscillations in the
business cycle, and that is why you need dynamic economic
policymaking. The prime minister is an economist himself and should
know that. In that sense, the Congress Party is guilty of not doing
things that it should have known to do. In much of the media, people
forget that when the BPJ coalition was in power between 1998 and
2004, they too had many corruption scandals, and they too—in some
cases—failed to make crucial economic reforms. It is easy to see the
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5. failings and errors of the most recent office holders and incumbents as
the most consequential ones, but the fact is that their predecessors
had many of the same kinds of problems.
GJIA: What do you consider to be the most likely outcome
when polls close on 16 May 2014?
I put a greater probability on a surprise outcome than many other
analysts do. Most other people seem to be putting that unusual
outcome, which is either a Congress-led coalition or a third front-led
coalition, in the 2-8 percent range. I put it a little higher than that, at
10 or 15 percent. The high probability outcome, a BJP-led coalition,
will be historic and unique in that it will establish an oscillation
between these two major parties for power. To an American audience,
that is akin to the post-Civil War entrenchment of a Democratic-
Republican cycle. If the BJP wins this year, we will have had two cycles
of this since the late 1990s in Indian democracy as well. If this most
likely outcome does come to pass, this pattern will be in place for a
longer period of time—30, 40, or 50 years. It will be the beginning of
the entrenchment of that cycle. It is also likely that it will force an
awareness and, in a sense, a realignment, of the relationship between
the national parties and the regional parties they need to court and
cooperate with to secure a coalition.
GJIA: Which key demographics have been appealed to by the
candidates and coalitions, and with which demographics
have different coalitions experienced success?
MR: It is risky to characterize Indian democracy as opportunistic and
cynical in appealing to what are called vote banks. These are typically
caste groups or religious groups—for example, the Congress Party
appealing specifically to Muslim and rural poor voters and the BJP
appealing to small traders, upper caste Hindus. These patterns are
well established and will continue in this election. Two things in this
election are unusual. One is a fight for the youth. Both parties, in a way
they have never done before, are fighting for the youth vote. This is
probably why Rahul Gandhi is being nudged forward as the candidate
for the Congress Party. Although he also comes from the Nehru-
Gandhi dynastic line and therefore has built-in name recognition with
the electorate, he is also a young person. Narendra Modi, who is in his
late 50s or early 60s, is younger, more dynamic, and more energetic
than many prime ministerial candidates in recent years, and is trying
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6. to use that to appeal to the youth. When I was at the Congress
informal campaign headquarters last week, I learned about the ways in
which the Congress campaign is using data-driven approaches to
access the youth vote. Strangely, despite the awareness that the youth
vote is important, there is very little actual use of youthful candidates
or proxies. The very small number of people under the age of 40 who
are consequential figures in Indian national politics is a general
pattern, and something that many Indian domestic critics and outside
observers find puzzling. In India, as in many other countries that have
either powerful Marxist or Communist party organizations, there are
youth party organs and entities including a Youth Congress and a BJP
youth. There is an organizational focus on youth prevalent inside the
party but outside of the public eye, the press, and the media.
The BJP in particular is also looking for support from a group called
the Other Backward Castes. These groups are in the bottom rungs of
the Hindu caste hierarchy. They are above the Dalits—the formerly so-
called Untouchables—have a reasonable social status, and are not
generally suffering in oppressed conditions, but consider themselves
to have a group identity. The BJP is targeting that group as well.
GJIA: What obstacles confront the BJP’s Narendra Modi as a
prime ministerial candidate? What criticisms have he and
his party received?
MR: There are three prominent criticisms [that pose] subsidiary
obstacles for him. The first is his record. As Chief Minister during the
2002 Gujarat riots, he certainly did not take as many actions to
prevent violence as he should have. It is possible he was actively
negligent in an effort to provide supporters, who are Hindu
nationalists, an opportunity to express themselves in the violent way
they did. [He faces criticism from] both the Muslim communities that
were victims of that and from other sympathetic groups like the
Congress Party and a prominent party in the western state of Bihar led
by Nitish Kumar, who last fall removed himself from the National
Democratic Alliance coalition supporting the BJP and said he would
not support them in the general campaign if Modi was the lead
candidate. Modi has been asked to make amends for the 2002 riots, by
secular sympathizers who want him to win, and he has had
opportunities to do that. Symbolic politics are consequential in India,
as they are in all countries. One way he could have done this is to have
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7. worn a Muslim skullcap and gone to pray at a mosque. He has been
sympathetic to other religious groups like Christians and Parsis, but he
has explicitly not taken steps to make amends with Muslims.
The second obstacle is factionalism and discord in the BJP itself. Modi
is younger and a Chief Minister, but he has not been a minister in the
Union Cabinet. While he has been a party stalwart, he has not been
active in the central party organization, and is considered somewhat of
an outsider compared to the old guard. Regardless of what you think
of the BJP, having outside blood and dynamism in the party is a good
thing from a political science or strategic perspective. This is a classic
example of patterns we see in the major parties in India. Old—70 or
older—line incumbents and longtime party stalwarts who feel they
deserve to be leaders of the party hold the best positions. In a sense,
[Modi’s candidacy] should be a good thing for the BJP, but so far it has
caused discord. It is possible that the publishing of the party manifesto
and its platform is being held up by this infighting, possibly with the
objective of sabotaging Modi’s prime ministerial candidature, perhaps
to try to put him on the back foot in a way that would allow an older
candidate to be in charge. Or it may just be that there is a lot of
strategizing that has to go on because there is disagreement. It may
not be quite that cynical.
The third obstacle is that political power in the country has been
shifting from the north, towards the south, where there are faster
growing states, higher literacy levels, and more modern sectors of the
economy. Though this has been happening since the late 1980s,
Modi’s status as a Hindi/Gujarati speaker whose identity is firmly
northern, not necessarily pan-Indian, could become an obstacle as
political power shifts south. He is not very well known in the south
because he has not been a union administer or an actor—to be a
Bollywood or other actor gets you well known in India, just like
Ronald Reagan in the United States. He does not have any of those
things, so a third obstacle is his northernness, if you will.
GJIA: In the event of a BJP-led coalition, what do you
predict will be the most significant policy changes the BJP
might enact?
MR: Regardless of which government or which party is in power,
there are tendencies in Indian politics through the legislative process
and the political culture that tend to draw all parties toward a general
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8. commonality among policies. There is not much policy difference
between the Congress and the BJP, much less many of the other
parties—with the exception of the Marxist and Communist parties. We
will probably see a more muscular verbal expression of Indian foreign
policy, which will sound more energetic than under the Congress
Party, but there will not be much real policy difference. I expect to see
a number of economic measures, probably in insurance, bank licenses,
roads, rails, and ports, to try to jump-start infrastructure. Under the
last BJP government, there were efforts to provide private use of the
rail system in which the actual rails continue to be owned by the rail
ministry but the rolling stock and the trains could be from private
companies. This would be an important difference. There was also a
push for what was then called the Golden Quadrilateral—connecting
the key points within India—and I would expect to see a lot of effort on
that compared to the Congress Party. One of the reasons why the BJP
is more likely to do that is because its infrastructure requires a lot
more displacement in rural zones, and the BJP seems willing to do
that whereas the Congress has a rural base.
Dr. Matthew Rudolph is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the
Department of Government at Georgetown University.
Dr. Rudolph was interviewed by Elaine Li and Ian Philbrick on 4
April 2014.
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