Currently, in seven phases from April 11 until May 19, 2019 some 900 million Indians are eligible to vote in the parliamentary election to constitute the 17th Lok Sabha. An excellent commentary to the election marathon in the world’s largest democracy comes from Ruchir Sharma, the Indian born chief global strategist and head of the emerging markets equity team at Morgan Stanley. In his new, at the same time entertaining and insightful book Democracy on the Road. A 25-Year Journey through India (Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, Amazon.fr, Amazon.de), he brings to life India. He has been following at least one big regional or national election every year since 1993.
Ruchir Sharma’s previous books include the international bestsellers Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles (2012; Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com) and The Rise and Fall of Nations (2016; Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com).
In 1998, in order to call the next elections accurately, Ruchir Sharma suggested to his boss that they needed to get out on the streets and talk to actual voters. A key lesson, which would be driven home on every trip for the next 20 years, was that India is thinly diced between thousands of castes and hundreds of languages, many isolated in a pocket inside a single state, that India is better understood as many countries than one. The reality of the “Many” Indias is a source of great controversy, particularly among the nationalists who would like to live in a country united under one culture. Ruchir Sharma insists that there is no other way to think about India that can explain the way its democracy works, or why its elections are so full of surprises.
Ruchir Sharma cites Hindustan Unilever’s CEO Sanjiv Mehta who told him that his company divides the 29 Indian states info 14 sub-regions, the 20 countries of the Middle East and North Africa into only 4, because its research shows, consumer tastes, habits and languages are far more fragmented in India.
Ruchir Sharma compares India to the United States, itself a melting pot of immigrants from many nations, where a poll of just 1000 to 2000 randomly choses people can produced an election forecast with a relatively small margin of error. I would add that exactly that strategy did not work regarding Trump’s election; pollsters got the overall majority for Clinton more or less right, but the presidential election was decided on the state level. But that’s an other story, and Ruchihr Sharma is of course right that most of the time the US polls are correct whereas, in India, pollsters have to survey tens of thousands of people just to get a partial sample of its diverse voters, and yet their record for accuracy is dismal. There are too many Indias to capture in one poll, or one trip, which has made life on the road for Ruchir Sharma and the colleagues traveling with him endlessly fascinating and inspiring.
The author states that, early on, he feared that the sprawling populations and scattered loyalities of the 29 states embodied more chaos than any one leader could ever govern effectively, but over time he came to realize that there is a way to govern India effectively: by letting its diverse states govern themselves, each under its own leader. India has so many parties because it has so many different communities, separated by caste, religion, tribe or language. And each one wants its own representative.
Ruchir Sharma does not intend to paint a rosy picture of India. He is aware of its broken state and the endemic corruption but, in the end, he comes away with deep optimism that democracy works in India because, for instance, the voters toss out its governing class more often than any other country he knows.
At the same time, he concludes that real powern in India resides with the political, not the economic class. And yet, for all their clout, in contrast to most Western societies, the odds are against Indian politicians holding on to their offices. India became a democracy when it was still poor. And the poor cherish the vote as a great leveller.
Local issues often trump national ones, and very dramatically from state to state. Corruption scandals have lead to many electoral defeats, e.g. in the case of Rajiv Gandhi and the Bofors case. However, one of the supreme ironies of Indian politics is that corruption charges seem to hurt more than convictions. Voters are so sure that justice in India is loaded against innocents, they often look more sympathetically on leaders emerging from jail, e.g. Lalu Yadav. In other emerging countries, politicians may come back after a jail term, but rearely do lock-ups provide a career boost, the way they do in India. Studies show that jail time is like a badge of honor.
Supporters praise the current prime minister Modi for raising India’s stature in the world. But Ruchir Sharma reminds readers that, more than once, Indian leaders—from Manmohan Singh to Chandrababu Naidu—lionized by the global elite from Mumbai to New York, have been thrown out be Indian voters who care more about the government’s impact on their daily life than about such cosmic concerns as India’s image in the world. Even a growth rate above the national level is no recipe for success. Inflation and droughts on the other hand are much more likely to have a negative impact.
Community identity is still the key to politics in India. Community, family, inflation, welfare, development, corruption and money are the key factors for success identified by Ruchir Sharma. A candidate has to appeal to the complex mix of sub-castes, religions and languages in each constituency and state. Rarely does one community or identity define even 30% of the population. The “dominant” communities often include not more than 10% to 20% of the electorate, as for example is the case in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
Often community ties are so powerful that even leaders without charisma and/or dazzling oratory and/or good (especially fair-skinned) looks can build a devoted following: Mayawati, Mulayam, Jayalalithaa.
Economic ideas do not play the same role in India that they do elsewhere. In more advanced democracies the main ideological divide involves the role of the state versus the free market in distributing wealth. Ruchir Sharma stresses that, in India, everyone is a statist: how can the state best help the poor? India’s political DNA is fundamentally socialist and statist and runs through the veins of all the leading parties.
Economic success, a growth rate above the national average, a rising stock market in Mumbai, all this helps at the margin (at best). The fate of incumbents is rather decided by inflation, particularly food price inflation. Double-digit GDP growth may help, but not for sure, whereas double-digit inflation rarely produces no (negative) result at the ballot box; e.g. inflation killed the re-election of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2014.
Regarding the voices who fear that the rising (Hindu) nationalism (by the BJP) is threatening India’s democracy, Ruchir Sharma reminds readers that they tend to underestimate the check provided by subnationational pride. Many Indians still see themselves first as Bengalis, Maharashtrians, Tamils, Gujaratis or Telugus, and they are much more likely to support a strongman (or woman) at the state level than in Delhi. The autor believes that India is too heterogeneous to be dominated by populist nationalism.
In conclusion, Ruchir Sharma is confident that in an era when democracy is said to be in retreat worldwide, it is thriving in India.
Ruchir Sharma: Democracy on the Road. A 25-Year Journey through India. Allen Lane, Penguin Random House India, 2019, 389 pages. Order the book from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, Amaz0n.fr, Amazon.de.
Democracy on the Road is the source for this article. For a better reading, quotations and partial quotations are not put between quotation marks.
Article added on May 1, 2019 at 16:16 Paris time.
