Getting on with the things that matter

Rita and Umesh Anand

ELECTIONS come with their surprises. The 2024 general election will be remembered for how the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was given a smaller mandate by voters just when it seemed omnipotent and poised for a big victory.

Right from the time the election process began, the BJP had declared itself the winner. The opposition had been derided and made almost invisible. A vast promotional effort positioned Narendra Modi as the supreme leader who could take India to great heights globally. Fawning anchors and editors and swarms of faceless bots reinforced this image.

Yet when the results came in, the BJP, far from being victorious, could barely form the government and that too only with the support of partners. What had gone wrong? Why was a party and its leader with lofty ambitions and the fastest growing economy in the world being given such short shrift?

Theories abound about how people voted. It would be a mix of many factors. Caste would have been a consideration. So also, local issues and concerns. The blitz about India rising would certainly have brought the BJP votes. But if you wish to see voting trends as a political smoothie the predominant flavour, to our journalistic taste buds at least, was the anguish of ordinary people over their poor quality of life.

Ayodhya, it should be noted, voted not for the Ram temple but for itself because despite all the hotels and wide roads nothing had been done for the residents of the rundown town. There was local disapproval over demolitions and other acts of highhandedness. At Ram’s birthplace a Dalit, no less, was elected in the ultimate snub to the BJP.

Hype is no substitute for reality. People live with problems that slogans don’t solve. The lack of basic amenities is a challenge people would rather do without, especially now when they can see on the internet the standards that prevail in other countries.

Crumbling cities and languishing villages don’t make a nation that is progressing. Modi’s claims of development and Viksit Bharat haven’t found ready resonance. Maybe he shouldn’t have been making them at all because many of the responsibilities for better development fall in the domain of the states, municipalities and panchayats. They need to be supported and given more agency, not dictated to.

Yet, he presented himself as an all-powerful leader, a messiah with personal guarantees. In the event, people in sizeable numbers, as the results show, weren’t convinced. They voted for leaders they could reach, touch and hold to account for deliverables at their doorstep.

The Modi government was finally seen as being by the rich, for the rich and without real solutions for the urgent problems of the country.

Commentators who say Modi’s personal popularity has not been dented may like to reconsider their calculations. A single leader can’t be the answer to a myriad of problems of development which require decentralized administrations.

Strident nationalism and religious sectarianism that the Modi BJP represents have limited appeal in a globalized world. To be rooted in religion or culture can be reassuring. But intermingling of people, ideas and economies is the modern mantra. Distributed technologies of various kinds have oriented people to make their own choices and get on with their lives. The thought of a dominant and dictatorial force can be abhorrent to people in a new age.

The BJP is not alone in the neglect of developmental issues or the use of freebies to make up for the lack of delivery. A review of manifestoes of all parties will show that health, housing, education, jobs, transportation, environment, agriculture at best get lip service. There is no serious discussion and strategizing within parties. 

The BJP had, however, promised that it could be different. But after 10 years in power, it seemed less likely than ever to deliver on those promises. Arrogance and concentration of power in one leader with close links to big business were reasons for people to wonder what the future would hold. Of what solace can a high GDP rate possibly be to a citizen who can’t access the basics of a better life? Instead of disparities being bridged they have actually been widening.  

With an election now done and dusted, how should the country proceed? There is a case for having a bipartisan agenda for getting those things in place that matter most to people.

With this in mind Civil Society reached out to some of the finest minds in different spheres to identify five initiatives each that a new government, of any persuasion, should take up for the benefit of the nation as a whole.

Employment tops the list because, of what value is economic growth if it cannot lead to a bigger and better trained workforce which is fairly paid and allowed to enjoy a higher standard of living? For far too long workers, most of them migrants trapped in skewed arrangements, have been exploited by paying them pitiable amounts and denying them their rights. Changing this should be a priority for both social and economic reasons.

Healthcare and education follow because they are the standard bearers of development. It should be the duty of any government to invest copiously in both. Currently, private schools and hospitals eat into family incomes significantly. Governments also need to ensure certain standards are maintained.

Important anti-poverty measures like the laws on the right to food and rural jobs should be placed above debate because they have proved their usefulness. They need to be strengthened and institutionalized to a greater degree. So also the right to information law which has been weakened in implementation but is at the heart of accountability in a functioning democracy.

There are many other areas that we feel we have gainfully covered in the collection of pieces that follows — innovation, technology, conservation, rural entrepreneurship and more. But ours is not an exhaustive exercise. For instance, we regret the omission of agriculture, but innumerable issues of Civil Society will tell you how much importance we give it and what the ways forward could be.

We in this magazine particularly worry about declining electoral standards and media values. A mature democracy chooses its leaders carefully. There should be a level playing field for all contestants to come forward equally. Impartial journalism has an important role to play too. It is not what we have been witnessing.

Technology allows the powerful to amplify their power. It can be all-pervasive and benumbing when controls are in a few hands. The past few months are an example. 

Chances are that you are bewildered and exhausted by the long election season. It was not that you were standing for election yourself, but at times it almost seemed so. The simple act of casting your vote became stressful, in the summer heat, but for those who wanted to make a difference it was an effort worth taking. There is a message in the mandate.