Why Singh was King

The Modi government is making everyone feel worse off. That's bad politics

Look back over the last 55 years, ie the period between 1962 and now, and you will find a distinct feature: the voters have given a full second term to just one Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh during 2004-14.

No other prime minister since Nehru died in 1964 has managed to get re-elected. True, Atal Behari Vajpayee was given three chances but his first government lasted 13 days and the second less than 20 months. When he finally got a full term (1999-2004) he was voted out at the end of his five years.

This is in sharp contrast to what has been happening in the states. There, in more than one state, the same chief minister has been returned to power, sometimes thrice but at least twice.

The secret of re-election

It is, therefore, worth asking what makes re-election happen. My theory is that while incumbent governments tend to focus on those of their actions which they think should make voters happy, the voter tends to focus on things that make him or her unhappy.

In other words, the lesson for political parties and prime ministers who are looking to get re-elected is that instead of loudly and insistently advertising your achievements, you should identify the things that are irritating the voter.

The unkindest cuts

In India, this tends to be just one thing: government actions that actually reduce both gross and disposable incomes of the voters. We are a very tolerant people and we are willing to accept all hardships – and you know how many there are – except a government that leaves us poorer.

Narendra Modi’s government has managed to do just that, and that the sense of being worse off that is starting now is likely to peak before the next general election. This is exactly had happened to Indira Gandhi in 1977, Morarji Desai in 1979, Rajiv Gandhi in 1989, Narasimha Rao in 1996 and Vajpayee in 2004. 

Why Singh was King

The exception was Manmohan Singh, and for a very good reason. Between 2004 and 2008 his government doubled minimum support prices, wrote off over Rs 75,000 crores of farm loans, increased subsidies to farmers and stepped up credit to them as never before. Overall, it put huge amounts of money in rural pockets, around Rs 6 lakh crore in the five years between 2004 and 2009.

Narendra Modi has done exactly the opposite. He has reduced farm subsidies, raised various MSPs by measly amounts and not (yet) waived any loans, nor increased rural credit. So even while he speaks loudly and frequently about how he is a farmer-friendly Prime Minister, the farmers can be forgiven for disagreeing. 

Gujarat is different

It cannot be that Mr Modi doesn’t know the importance of the farm vote. Of course he does. But if you ask people who know Gujarat, they will tell you that he has made a big mistake. He has assumed that the farmers in the rest of India will respond to his farm policies – of overall facilitation -- in exactly the same way as the farmers of Gujarat did.

But, they will also tell you that it is not just the farmer in Gujarat but everyone else, too, has a different attitude to economic activity. In a nutshell, they don’t see the government as a provider; they see it as a facilitator and are happy when it facilitates.    

How this will impact

So what worked in Gujarat will not work elsewhere, especially not in the Hindi states from where the BJP won 183 of its total of 282 seats. It may not also work in Maharashtra and Gujarat which gave the BJP 49 seats. This means only 50 of the 282 seats came from the rest of the 19 or 20 states.

In other words, the BJP is faced with a double-whammy: it may have managed to annoy voters in exactly the states that gave it its majority.

This does not automatically mean that the BJP will not be re-elected for another term. It probably will. But is also means that it may lose its simple majority.

Too late?

Is it too late now for the government to rectify matters before voter annoyance turns into anger? Probably. The BJP has still to learn that sensible economic policies make for counter-productive political consequences because they create too many losers in the short run.