Elections 2014: Why Indians didn't want to waste their vote

This is the story of a discovery I stumbled upon weeks before the General Election began on April 7. I did not write about it because, in the absence of statistical evidence, it seemed downright inane. Wherever I stopped to speak to people, the one argument invariably proffered to explain their decision to vote the BJP was: “I don’t want to waste my vote.” This refrain acquired a decibel impossible to ignore as India negotiated its way through multiple rounds of voting. In Varanasi, for instance, the owner of the cab that a friend and I had hired suspected that neither the city he lived in nor his personal life will benefit from Narendra Modi becoming the Prime Minister. Pointing to the garbage heaps, broken roads, the polluted Ganga, he said the BJP had been repeatedly winning from Varanasi, yet its civic amenities were lamentable. So why was he voting the BJP? Prompt came the familiar reply: “I don’t want to waste my vote.” To fathom his psychology and that of his ilk, my friend asked, “Have you placed bets on Modi winning from Varanasi?” No, he replied, a tad bewildered. “Do you believe voting is akin to opting for an investment promising high returns?” The cab-owner said, “No”. “Then why?” we persisted. He laughed and said, “What’s the point of voting a loser?” In other words, he and many others were voting the BJP because it seemed the most likely, even a certain winner. [caption id=“attachment_1541307” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Election officials install an EVM. Reuters.[/caption] In case you think the I-don’t-want-to-waste-my-vote syndrome is typically a non-metro or rural feature, then you are being supercilious. A friend was dismayed on having a telephonic conversation 24 hours after the BJP won a majority on its own. The caller had detailed how she diligently researched the background of candidates in the fray in the East Delhi constituency. Rajmohan Gandhi seemed just the person she thought ought to represent her. She voted him. But Gandhi was trounced. It seemed to her he had betrayed her in not swimming against the Modi wave to the shore called Victory. “Never again,” she hollered to my friend, “I am not voting the Aam Aadmi Party ever again. It has been such a terrible waste of my vote.” Ah, this pining to belong to the camp of the victorious! It would seem a person’s esteem suffers a terrible blow to vote a candidate who eventually loses an electoral contest. This psychology needs to be unravelled. The I-don’t-want-to-waste-my-vote syndrome tells us that today’s Indians want to win, regardless of the nature of victory and the means employed to achieve it. In this worldview, politics has a meaning only if it leads to success, a success achieved not over 10-15 years, but immediately, now. Ideas of change or reform don’t matter, nor do quests and struggles, nor the past of candidates. Some would call this syndrome a manifestation of anomie, a term sociologist Emile Durkheim coined to explain the phenomenon of breakdown of ethical standards in a society suddenly nose-diving or zooming to the skies, often economically. This is why candidates who have corruption or criminal cases pending against them slip into the Lok Sabha every election. All that they need is to figure out the most likely winner and switch sides. Or disburse the lucre in his or her constituency, and the person won’t be asked to account for the colour of money spent. This is precisely why we go rah-rah over the captains of industry who bend laws and grease palms to add a few zeroes to their profits. This syndrome also tells you of the dimming lure of ideologies. For beyond the committed – the cadres or core voters – any ideology needs an endorsement from an army of floating voters for at least one election to establish its sway. They may have hopped around earlier as well, but the motivation to do so today arises not from the relevance of a favoured ideology, its meaning and efficacy to build a ‘better’ society, but from the perception that the party espousing it is rated to have the best chances of winning. Perceptions can be manipulated, particularly in this era of mass media. You think I am making a snide remark against what was an arguably high-voltage BJP campaign. No doubt, the campaign was lavishly funded, but it was also extremely well thought out. Even before I embarked upon my election tours, journalist-friends on their forays in the Hindi heartland called to say that, believe it or not, even those steadfastly opposed to Hindutva, say, the Jatav followers of Mayawati or Yadav voters of Mulayam Singh Yadav, believe the BJP is winning. It is just the ambience, a necessary condition, for the I-don’t-want-to-waste-my-vote camp to swell. It’s true this camp has always existed. You can also say that a little more than 60 per cent of India’s population did not join this camp. Nevertheless, the lure to rally behind the projected winner appears irresistible to those whose past loyalties have weakened, because their fidelity to parties hasn’t been renewed through ideological reinvention and affirmation, because the venality of leaders and their penchant to promote their family seem such a betrayal of the faith reposed in them. Ideals compromised become a push-factor to migrate to the winner’s camp. In the past, India has romanced losers, those who struggled honourably, even valiantly, for a vision they subscribed to. The I-don’t-want-to-waste-my-vote syndrome tells you about the declining breed of those who live life in defiance, in opposition. A society is doomed to become static, even pathological, in which the space for dissent and rebellion shrinks, and whose members worship the winner alone, regardless of whether or not they adhere to his or her worldview.