What Next?

So Congress party has suffered one of its heaviest defeats in these By-Elections, the question is where does it go from here. There are various ways to evaluate these results, BJP thinks and is projecting this as a Modi wave, AAP suddenly feels that it can take on anyone anywhere even when they haven’t won majority seats in Delhi.  Congress on the other hand suffered because it refused to look at the changing trends in the country.

The idea that people are disconnected from the decision making and needs to be provided for or to be told 'what is right' is an archaic way of governing. Most of the western democracies have faced this before and maybe it would give us an indication for the future. However, who takes it and implements it would define the future for them and us as citizens of this country.

Ronald Regan in the US and Margret Thatcher in the UK came to power with the direct connect with the people. They rode on the premise that large governments are bad. ‘Government is part of the problem not of the solution.’ They were very successful, however, at the end of these periods first in the US and then in the UK a phenomenon occurred which transformed the basic structure of how you fight an election and how you define your policies and manifestos. It was first Bill Clinton and then later Tony Blair who executed this strategy to win these elections.    

Congress at this moment finds itself being squeezed from both sides as its voter base is being high jacked from both ends. Narendra Modi backed by large corporations on the ‘Right’ side of politics and on the other side a lot of regional parties and I am including AAP in it too as their political presence is still only in Delhi. If you are economically liberal but socially conservative, the BJP and Narendra Modi seem like a good choice.  But Mr. Modi is making, ‘Denial of Compassion’ a respectable thing. He is telling the majority that it is OK for them to be cruel towards others both on a social-religious level and also at the economic level. For people who are socially liberal but economically conservative can choose between Congress and a few smaller parties. Congress in principle would remain economically left leaning, though, apart from a few mass schemes their larger economic ideology is not very different from BJP. Now I really haven’t seen a proper political philosophy from AAP yet and I am not sure where they stand. The idea that governments basic job is to look after marginalised parts of the society and to make larger political sense of the views in this article I am putting Congress in the category of a Left leaning party on both social and economical basis rather than a centrist one.

People like me face a problem now; we want a socially aware and liberal government which has an open mind towards economic freedom. Because this is the only way we would be able to keep the social fabric of anti-communalism and will also be able take a large poor population of this country and give them a life which they aspire. I mean the life they aspire and not what politicians look to aspire for us.

The interesting thing is that most Indians want clean and efficient governance as the US voters in 1980 wanted before Ronald Regan was elected and in the UK before the 1979, Margret Thatcher elections. AAP and BJP’s whole campaign is centred on this.

But what makes it more complex is the use of internet and social media is penetrating deep and this power lies with the a large chunk of new voters. They like the mid 90s in the US and UK want participation in the decision making and an expression of self more than any other thing. They want to be heard of their aspirations and need someone to formulate strategies on these individuals and not on top-down approach of policy making which treats large pockets of the populations as social groups which could be catered in large numbers.

A few days ago my grand mom had passed away and this tragic event gave me a chance to travel to right in the centre in India. Travelling in deep Madhya Pradesh between Seoni and Chhindwara is an 80 km journey with one major stop centred right in between but it is also littered with many small villages where the bus driver only stops to pick or drop someone. We must have travelled around 20 kms when the bus stopped and I saw two girls came running from a nearby village which might have been around 150 mts from the road. We waited for these girls to board the bus. They got in and paid Rs.20 as a one way fare. The same happened with another three of them in the next village and another few at the next. Most of these were girls, neatly dressed, most of them with book bags and mobile phones. Some of them even had smart phones. As one of these girls was sitting next to me I asked where they were going and the response was, “We are going to Chaurai (a small town or a large village, whatever you want to call it centred in between Seoni and Chhindwara) to attend the coaching classes for Pre Engineering College Exams. This elated me, this dedication in girls for higher studies, they walk some distance to come to the road, then take a bus by paying Rs. 40 each day for a round trip, just to get a little coaching to appear in an exam in probably one of the deepest parts of India. My first reaction was, now this could make us the best nation in the world in coming years but as I evaluated it turns out that on the other hand if we do not fulfil their aspirations in the coming future we could have a disaster of disgruntled 400 million who would be under 30. This demographic advantage could just work against us.      

This story points out what most parties are missing and especially Congress. Winning of the election using top-down large mass scale schemes like Food security bill or NREGA for rural employment might not be enough. No, I am not saying that they are not important, au contraire, I think they are important but what they miss is the individual touch. We need to look at all the demographics and then evaluate and measure, the desires and values of individuals. Look what each individual feels inside, what motivates them or what is important for them in the future.

The reduction of congress in scale would be largely detrimental to India as a Federal union of states because we do want a strong and stable central government which doesn’t always have to rely on multi party coalitions. Congress and to a certain extent BJP are the only contenders. But there seems to be a chasm between the Congress Party and the common man desires. Somehow there seems that the man on the street thinks of Congress as elitist even when they try to implement most of large scale mass benefiting policies.  

However, there lies an advantage that Congress has over a lot of other parties. The socially aware people and most intellectuals will still make a choice which is socially liberal and economically beneficial to large sections of society and this is a stand on which Congress party stands. It needs a way to attract not only these people into its fold rather than losing them to AAP but also it needs to engage the next generation so that they can be motivated by this political philosophy.  But this to materialize sycophancy needs to go, this perception that the Congress Party is centred around a family has been detrimental to its larger cause.

Ronald Reagan and Margret Thatcher were the first exponents of using individualism in politics. They thought that an individual should be the focus and not the usual demographic divides. In both these cases it was the business which actually fulfilled the desires of the individuals. Republicans ruled the US for next 12 years and in the UK dominated the politics for next 18.

But, it was socialist and left leaning Bill Clinton who truly used the idea of participation an individual in creating a campaign to the fullest. He came from Democratic Party which was left leaning and believed in government for the masses but he knew the new masses were everywhere and at every level of society.    

He promised tax breaks to the middle class fully knowing that by doing that his welfare programs would get hurt. But he was determined to come to power and yet fulfil the large Democratic policies of helping the poor and marginalised first. However, a rude shock came to him in the congressional election of 1994. He lost badly in both the houses because he had chosen to not look at the individual desires that he had come to power with. The voters felt betrayed and wanted revenge. This is the exact same situation that the Congress Party faces today as most people voted anti-Congress mandate.

Clinton tweaked his policy formulation again for his re-election. He used focus groups in the same way as psychoanalysts use to extract the inner desires and feelings of individuals. People were divided by inner psychological needs into different segments. This information was then evaluated to formulate his policies. The policies looked odd when viewed through the lens of old politics. They looked short term and very basic and small initiatives, but the Clinton team knew that this was the new way.  This way Clinton was the first to design his policies for the future based on direct feedback he had received from the voters.  Then in 1997, Tony Blair was able to oust Conservatives using exactly the same way to win his election.

People today in India desire more not only in what they buy but also from their government. They want to be treated as individuals who should be taken seriously.  But a caution that needs to be pointed out, though in some sense a lot of people are aspiring and connected to the mainstream but our physical infrastructure roads, ports, electricity seems to be stuck a long way behind. That is why some kind of Roosevelt’s welfare model needs to be merged with the Clintonian model.

What Congress (or any other party) needs to do is to create a massive engagement with the large sections of the voting population. Figure out the inner desires and values of people, what they feel inside about their lives? What motivates them? What is important to them? What policies would help them? What social structure would give them a sense of satisfaction? What do they aspire and what are the hindrances in achieving those desires? This needs to be measured and analysed. Instead of picking the regular divisions of society, age, caste, religion, language or class this data could divide these individuals on the inherent traits.

So the concluding message would be. Do not denigrate the aspiration of real India. Treat voters as participants or owners in the process rather than the targets or beneficiaries, don’t try to manipulate them, just learn from them.

It might seem hard at the beginning with a diverse country of ours. We endure & celebrate the diversity of the utmost kind but we might be surprised to find that the underlying feelings & wishes amongst most sections of our society might be very similar. These similarities and dissimilarities at the people level need to be evaluated. Once you are able to establish the desires and the motivations I am sure that we would have not only a better government but also more aware and better citizens. This inturn would create a better democracy which would be based on true desires and feelings of each and every individual.