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The turnout was low but not alarmingly so

Suhas Palshikar and

Sanjay Kumar

If the `1990s witnessed the `second democratic upsurge'— greater participation and more intense politicisation of the disadvantaged social groups — the recent Lok Sabha elections indicate both a stabilisation of that upsurge and its stagnation. We have arrived at a stage when expansion of participation in the procedural sense has been achieved; the participatory norm has penetrated all social sections. At the same time, the expansion of the participatory norm has probably slowed down. This is evident both in the case of the voter turnout and the campaign-related participation of the voters.

In this election, we had one of the lower voter turnouts in recent times. The final figure of 58.3 per cent is 1.7 percentage points down as compared to the turnout in 1999. The turnout was still lower in 1991 and 1996, held in a comparable season. In some States, the turnout was actually much below the national average. In Gujarat, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh it was below the 50 per cent mark. At the same time, it needs to be underlined that we are not looking at an alarming all-round decline of interest and participation in political activity. The CSDS' National Election Study has been tracking respondents all over the country about different forms of political participation in various elections. Our findings show that the participation in election-related activities this time was marginally higher than in 1999. More people reported that they were interested in elections, went to attend election meetings, took part in the election campaign and were visited by canvassers at home. These findings put in perspective the media hype about voters' apathy. Much of that refers to the indifference in the urban centres that have been recording lower turnouts than in rural areas for the last two decades. This time it was the same story, except that the rural areas saw a greater fall in turnout compared to 1999.

The National Election Study 2004 also offers some other evidence that would increase one's confidence in the system of elections. This election saw Electronic Voting Machines being used throughout the country for the first time. Asked which of the two methods they prefer, 90 per cent of those who had an opinion said they preferred the EVMs. That is a very strong endorsement of the new experiment. Asked to assess the fairness of the election process, only 11 per cent said the elections were "not at all fair." At the same time those who were prepared to say that the elections were fully fair did not exceed 38 per cent. Contrary to what one may expect, only 12 per cent said that malpractice such as rigging had increased in their locality in their own memory.

The available figures show that the gap between the turnout of men and women continues at the same level as before. While 62 per cent of the men turned out to vote, the figure was less than 54 per cent among the women. In this respect, the elections in the 1990s had shown a tendency for the gap to come down, but that trend did not continue after 1998. In all the States in the North-East, the gap between men and women was very low and, in exceptional cases such as Andaman and Nicobar, Lakshadweep, Dadra Nagar Haveli, the number of women voters was higher than men. In Himachal and Chandigarh, the figures were the same for men and women. Otherwise, in most of the States, there was a gap of about five to six percentage points between men and women. Gujarat, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand had more than an eight percentage point gap in the turnout.

The gender gap was also evident in the candidatures. In States such as Orissa, Kerala, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh, there was a little more than average representation of women candidates. The parties that had talked loudly of reservation for women in legislatures did not bother to field more women. The Congress led in this: it had 11 per cent women candidates as against the BJP's eight per cent, the Samajwadi Party's 10 per cent and the Left parties' less than seven per cent.

The data from the National Election Study 2004 gives us insights into the caste/community-wise levels of voter turnout and political participation for which there is no official data. One contrast that emerges from this analysis is between the "upper castes" and the Dalits. The "upper castes" are increasingly turning away from the electoral arena while more and more Dalits are firmly moving in. In a sense, the battle is over who owns the democratic process. Since the 1990s, the Dalits and the OBCs have invested more and more stakes in the democratic process. Even in the case of interest in campaign and participation in the campaign, the Dalits and OBCs have a higher proportion of the interested and the active in comparison to the "upper castes." This has some implication for the meaning of elections and also the meaning of election results. This also leads us to an ambivalence about the party electoral competition: while people hold elections and party competition as the game of the rich, they also see in it and in their right to vote, an opening — a possibility of penetrating this preserve of the rich. On the other hand, in spite of holding `politics' as the preserve of the rich, people come to expect the same political arena to deliver for the ordinary and the poor.

In addition to the ambivalence, comes the stagnation of the democratic upsurge. This has two dimensions: on the one hand, the stagnation refers to a slowing down of the expansion of the participatory norm even among the Dalits and the OBCs. On the other hand, there has not been a substantive expansion and control over the political process. The expansion stops at gestures and symbols, at procedures and tokens without deepening the democratic contestation.

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Stories in this Section

• Radical shift in the social basis of political power
• Methodology of National Election Study 2004
• A vote for secular politics
• The turnout was low but not alarmingly so
• Reform: the elites want it, the masses don't
• Caste matters, but so do a whole lot of other things
• Vajpayee's popularity alone was not enough
• Alliances did the trick for the Congress

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