Not by women alone

It is open season on the Congress after the rout that they experienced at the hands of a sans dynasty BJP. Gurus are claiming that Ms Sonia Gandhi has led the Congress down the garden path "" again. But the pundits may have it all wrong.

Is it not the case that three women won the coveted job of a Chief Minister? Well, what does that tell you "" the people of India want women as their leaders, that's what. India Today was keen to underline this point. It's cover (December 15, 2003) read "Women for women: While a decisive women's vote brings three women chief ministers to power".

Add to the fact that three women won, the reality that the only Congress leader who won was a woman. And the only state that did not return a woman as Chief Minister was the state where two (male) crooks were fighting. This is the age of the female voter "" I also want their vote.

But coming back to the Congressi. Isn't the voice (seems from the wilderness for the old-fashioned males) telling you that the reason Congress lost so badly was because it did not have enough of women leadership as demonstrated by Mses Sonia Gandhi and her henchwoman Ambika Soni.

Isn't it time that the future hope of the Congressi, Ms Priyanka Gandhi, was drafted and pleaded with to help lead the party to victory in the next general election? There is a small matter of who will be the ultimate leader, but the mother and daughter can sort that minor problem out.

Some wise Congressi actually believe, and now wave the Assembly poll results to bolster their claim, that with an additional female leader Priyanka , the Congress can look forward to 300 seats. And why not "" it may not be the age of Aquarius but it definitely is the age of the decisive woman's vote.

But how womanly was the recent vote? The table reports Aaj Tak ""ORG-MARG exit poll results for the four states. (Note that only exit polls can yield information on how each sex voted; also note that the exit poll got Chhattisgarh horribly wrong unless the third sex accounts for a large fraction of the population).

table

The columns 'excess women for woman' and 'excess men for woman' tell the tale "" and underline how interpreting the recent election as woman firepower is, well, quite wrong. In Rajasthan, an extra 3 per cent women voted for Ms Raje, but an extra 6 per cent men also voted for her.

In MP, an extra 11 per cent women voted for Ms Bharati but an extra 13 per cent men also voted for her. Score 0 out of 2 for the 'woman' vote. In Delhi, the numbers are suggestive of the importance of being a woman "" a whopping extra 13 per cent of women opted for Ms Dixit, compared to only an extra 5 per cent of men. Chhattisgarh "" don't ask for two reasons.

Everybody seems to have voted for Mr Jogi (an excess 7 per cent of women and an extra 2 per cent of men) and he still lost by a large margin (36 seats to BJP's 50).

The near universal message of the exit polls "" women favoured (relative to men) the losing candidate in three out of the four states, and favoured only one out of the three winning women. Not yet the age of the Indian woman voter. Ms Priyanka Gandhi, you can wait for your 300 seats "" the nation, and the women, are not yet ready.

So what really really happened in the recent elections? Before the vote, the unanimity "" nay, near identity "" of the opinion polls seemed to suggest that polling had come of age in India. Like the West, we would know the people's choice accurately and fast. Surely, we have enough experience to have conquered the mysteries of the Indian voter.

The fact that we haven't, and Rajasthan is the real wrong 'un' (along with Chhattisgarh) suggests one of three possibilities: the sample sizes are too small; the Indian voter lies and we have not yet figured out a deciphering code; the Indian voter changes his mind at the last minute.

The first possibility is theoretically plausible, but elementary statistics suggest that the sample sizes are more than adequate. The second explanation is real but borders on tautology "" if you get it right, the voter was not lying, and if you get it wrong, the voter was. The third explanation is a cop-out "" and also does not explain why the exit polls often get it all wrong (see Chhattisgarh).

There is a fourth explanation "" opinion polling in India has more than a normal dose of 'ideological bias'. Like cricketing umpires of yesteryear, the bias is in favour of 'home country'. And there are politicians who believe that opinion poll results can affect the final judgment "" so why not befriend your friendly pollster.

But bias can occur without any direct or indirect corruption "" that is when it is 'ideological' bias. Having noticed it rather too frequently in economics, and especially on emotive issues like poverty and inequality, it is not at all surprising that ideology exists in the truly uncertain, and art, subject of political polling.

That still does not yield an answer to the question of what happened? My last column entitled 'Year of incumbent leadership' contained many forecasts and only one of them has so far been proven wrong. Like any good forecaster, I had hedged by stating that both incumbency would be a positive factor (hence the Congress incumbents could expect to win) and that leadership was important (hence Congress leaders faced the electorate with a leadership handicap in the form of Ms Gandhi).

I did not explicitly state so, but I believed, that regardless of the handicap, Mr Gehlot would win Rajasthan, Ms Dixit would win Delhi, Mr Digvijay would lose MP (I had even suggested he should become a national leader) and Chhattisgarh "" who cares. The real error was Rajasthan, and like many others, I still do not know what happened.

Perhaps it was the larger picture that dominated "" the one about leadership. Voters saw this election (this is strictly ex-post reasoning) as a prelude to the real thing; perhaps they saw a heavy Congress defeat, due to dynastic leadership, in the Lok Sabha elections and decided to vote for the BJP for 'strength through contiguous continuity'.

If the state and Centre are run by the same party, less chance for friction, and more chance for goodies, and perhaps even development. Makes sense, doesn't it? If you have a better explanation, I would love to hear it.

ssbhalla@oxusresearch.com