Voters are no longer swayed by freebies and symbolism

This is a long mea culpa to the India voter. We underestimated you once again. The scale of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s victory in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections was expected least of all by academics and intellectuals. Many of us in the Western academia believe (despite the usual hemming and hawing and footnotes qualifying arguments) that voters in the Global South are not creatures of ideas. They are driven by baser instincts. For them, some rupees, samosas, liquor, few gifts and the promise of jobs is all one needed to win their votes.

To describe this system of exchange between politicians (patrons) and voters (clients), political scientists and economists use concepts like patronage, clientelism, and vote buying. Our understanding, given the acceptance of patronage thesis in academic circles, is that the better and bigger patron wins elections. It is no surprise then, that a few weeks before U.P. elections, many academics and leaders of the Samajwadi Party and the Congress were convinced that their alliance was much ahead in the race.

Getting it wrong

This optimism was based on many reasons. Akhilesh Yadav was extremely popular and ubiquitous on television. The media heralded him as an agent of change who dared to take on the old guard, even within his own family. And the SP-Congress alliance had the social arithmetic in its favour. But, the most important reason for the optimism among many observers was that Mr. Yadav had followed the patronage regimen by rule book. He had not played usual caste politics but had wooed voters through direct giveaways and this seemed the path to victory.

Mr. Yadav’s campaign team created his image of a leader who would take along everyone. In his five years as Chief Minister, his administration wooed every possible community of voters with pure patronage. In the very first meeting of the U.P. Cabinet after the results of the 2012 Assembly elections, his government announced an unemployment allowance of ₹1000 per month to everyone over 35 years of age and laptops and tablet computers to students who passed the class 12 and class 10 examinations. It also gave financial assistance of ₹30,000 to Muslim girls who passed class 10.

In the next five years, his government, through the Samajwadi Pension Yojana, gave pension benefits to over 5.5 million residents. The party offered free smartphones to over 25 million people after the elections of 2017. When the fallout associated with demonetisation of currency notes led to a slowdown in registrations for the smartphone scheme, the government not only extended the deadline for registration, but also set up a dedicated helpline to address any issues during registration process.

The SP also rewarded many groups with symbolic measures as well. To honour luminaries of specific communities, the government declared public holidays on the birth anniversary of former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar; Maharshi Kashyap Jayanti and Maharshi Nishadraj Jayanti; Hazrat Ajmeri Garib Nawaz Urs; Maharana Pratap Jayanti; and Karpoori Thakur Jayanti.

By all accounts then, the SP government should have comfortably returned to power given this level of patronage. Yet, there was collectively a 12 percentage-point swing in votes away from the two parties and the alliance won only 54 seats in a house of 403 legislators. The proponents of patronage theory, however, would argue that for it to become an effective strategy of winning votes, the patron must follow some rules like effective targeting of benefits; giving information about who gave these benefits (credit claiming); presence of brokers who could help the patron in monitoring and sanctioning (of those beneficiaries who did not vote in favour).

Mr. Yadav’s government meticulously targeted different demographic profiles through these schemes. Pensions targeted housewives; the Kanya Vidya Dhan focussed on young women; the housing scheme was for the poor; the unemployment allowance was for middle-aged men; the laptops were for first-time voters; the irrigation schemes and the farm loan waiver were supposed to get the votes of farmers. Did beneficiaries actually receive the benefits? Survey data from Cicero Associates and Lokniti-CSDS show that these schemes did reach the intended beneficiaries. Were people made aware of these schemes? According to news reports, the SP government handed out pamphlets and special campaigns were run on TV, radio and social media highlighting the flagship programmes.

No correlation

According to Cicero’s data, voters in U.P. were more likely to approach local leaders (or brokers) connected with the SP for any work as they believed that government officers were more likely to listen to leaders associated with the ruling party. However, there was no correlation between who voters were likely to approach for their work and which party they indicated they would vote for. And this is not just a U.P. story. Even in Tamil Nadu, widely considered the pioneer in the passing of freebies, we found little support for the idea that votes are solely tied to patronage in a survey experiment conducted during the 2011 elections.

The results from U.P. and Tamil Nadu fatally damage the characterisation of Indian voters as motivated solely by patronage. The question is, can academics like us let go of our view that citizens are homo economicus and therefore votes are bought and sold?

The authors are with Travers Department of Political Science, University of California at Berkeley, U.S.