Does the voter have a choice?

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. — Winston Churchill

There would be a lot of takers for this particular sentiment at the moment in India. The landslide victory by the AIADMK and its allies in the recent Tamil Nadu assembly elections and the subsequent appointment of Jayalalitha as chief minister has provoked a wave of dismay and disapproval in the rest of the country.

Though much discussion has centered around the legal loophole that barred Ms Jayalalitha from standing for elections but not from becoming chief minister, there is clearly a strong sense of disenchantment with the Tamilian voter for what appears to be a stirring endorsement of corruption. Given the fact that a leader facing as many as fourteen corruption cases, and convictions in three of them, has been elected with a thumping majority there seems little one can say in the voter’s defence. Perhaps the electorate is ’the incompetent many’ as Shaw said or fickle as Shakespeare once indicated.

Before we rush to judgment perhaps it is time to look a little more closely at the concept of public opinion and the systems we have evolved to measure and interpret it. Unlike the developed world where every shade of public opinion is avidly monitored with opinion polls and media coverage, we in India tend to rely heavily on elections to gauge the mood of the people. Not any election but parliamentary and assembly elections. Not only do we expect them to serve up definitive trends we expect them to be a statement of policy, a reflection of current morality and a referendum on past performance.

Is this really fair? For one thing, elections are but flawed processes. In most elections, a substantial number (30-40 per cent) of the electorate does not vote. Of those who do a small percentage can swing the vote in favour of a candidate and a party. For practical purposes an election must yield a winner but can a winner be said to represent the unequivocal, undisputed will of the people?
In the specific case of Jayalalitha, contrary to perception, half the electorate, according to provisional estimates that did turn out to vote, did not choose the AIADMK and its allies. Elections take place (usually) at five year intervals.

Given the primacy we accord to elections as a barometer of public opinion, it is assumed that on polling day, the voter will express all of his or her myriad and complex expectations and disappointments of the past and the next five years in one single action of choice. This is patently absurd. If the same sort of attention was also focused on other forms of expression: grassroot level movements, the media, local elections then perhaps we might have a more complex grasp of public opinion. It is this exaggerated emphasis on elections that results in heightened expectations of new governments and the predictable disillusionment a few years later.

Which brings us to the third factor which is the assumption underlying efforts to analyse public opinion, that there is a complex array of choices before the masses. In reality, the choices are often between the devil and the deep sea. The people of Tamil Nadu were said to have been disappointed with several aspects of DMK rule, including it’s elitist priorities. If so how were they to express it? Indeed given the anti-incumbency factor that has become a mantra for all elections the only choice the Indian voter has is to reject all governments serially regardless of the alternatives.

Which is not to absolve the Tamilian voter of culpability. Emotional propaganda is said to have played a considerable role in these elections characterised by landslide victories. Margaret Thatcher, to quote another British prime minister maintained that ‘‘There is little hope for democracy if the hearts of men and women in democratic societies cannot be touched by a call to something greater than themselves.’’ Arguably the Tamil Nadu voter chose to ignore the larger interests of morality. But he or she has pointed to the political bankruptcy that offers nothing but extreme choices.

It is time to reassess the myth of the almighty Indian voter, not because he is not powerful, but because his powers are limited by his options and by the mode of expression. Acknowledging this will also reduce our dependence on elections as mirrors of public opinion. If we paid more attention to the spaces in between there might be a greater chance for political responsiveness: for new initiatives or for erring incumbents to correct themselves, mid-course, saving us from the make or break melodramas that our elections have become.

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