Political parties in India who have delivered high economic growth have lost elections in the past.
Predicting election outcomes in India is a hazardous activity; inferring them from economic performance is even more hazardous.
Going by per-capita income growth, one would predict a resounding victory for the ruling Congress party-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA).
At 7.4%, per-capita income growth during the first four years of the UPA rule has been by far the highest of any four-year period in India's post-independence history.
Yet, if the electorate goes by the contribution the present government has made to the accelerated growth in incomes, it would hand the latter its worst defeat. The UPA government has perhaps done the least of all governments since the 1991 Narasimha Rao-led Congress administration to advance economic reforms.
The government of Mr Rao, which came to power in June 1991, is credited with launching the most far-reaching and systematic economic reforms. The reforms not only stabilised the economy following the 1991 balance of payments crisis, they also delivered the hefty 6.5% per annum growth during the last three years of his tenure.
Yet, he lost the 1996 election.
In a similar vein, led by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, the BJP-led NDA government undertook massive reforms in virtually all areas of economic activity during its tenure from 1998 to 2004. Those reforms made a significant contribution to the shift in India's growth rate to the current 8% to 9% growth trajectory. In the last fiscal year of the NDA government, 2003-04, the economy grew 8.5%.
Yet, the NDA government lost power to the UPA.
Today, Congress has only 153 of the 272 seats it needs for a majority in parliament. The UPA consists of 11 parties and still needs the outside support of half a dozen other parties to achieve a majority.
A dramatic example of the importance of coalition politics is provided by the role played by the southern regional party, the DMK, in 2004. It had been with the NDA in the 1999 election but switched allegiance to the UPA in the 2004 election. Its 16 seats, subtracted from the NDA and added to the UPA, provided the balance of votes the UPA needed to from the government.
In recent years, voters have returned state governments to power only when the latter have provided decisively good management and delivered perceptible improvement in living standards. Therefore, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat represent a handful of the cases in which the electorate returned the incumbent governments back to power.
The key factor behind the change in voter attitude was the "revolution of rising expectations" unleashed by the reforms and the resulting growth acceleration.
In most cases, the electorate has handed punishing defeats to incumbents even if it has meant replacing them with another equally incompetent government. the voter remained in the grip of fatalism: kya karen, bhagwan ki marzi hai, but once reforms showed him that change was possible and that poverty was not God's will, he became more demanding. If the incumbent won't deliver fast enough, he would try someone else.
Moral of the story is : "All politics is local" as said by former US House Speaker Tip O'Neal. So is it in India. Within a week's time all the voters are going to try next set of Politicians with another set of Principles and it is rightly remarked that the "Government is basically chosen by all those educated and civilized citizens who do not vote, in addition to all those who mere exercise their right to vote".
Predicting election outcomes in India is a hazardous activity; inferring them from economic performance is even more hazardous.
Going by per-capita income growth, one would predict a resounding victory for the ruling Congress party-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA).
At 7.4%, per-capita income growth during the first four years of the UPA rule has been by far the highest of any four-year period in India's post-independence history.
Yet, if the electorate goes by the contribution the present government has made to the accelerated growth in incomes, it would hand the latter its worst defeat. The UPA government has perhaps done the least of all governments since the 1991 Narasimha Rao-led Congress administration to advance economic reforms.
The government of Mr Rao, which came to power in June 1991, is credited with launching the most far-reaching and systematic economic reforms. The reforms not only stabilised the economy following the 1991 balance of payments crisis, they also delivered the hefty 6.5% per annum growth during the last three years of his tenure.
Yet, he lost the 1996 election.
In a similar vein, led by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, the BJP-led NDA government undertook massive reforms in virtually all areas of economic activity during its tenure from 1998 to 2004. Those reforms made a significant contribution to the shift in India's growth rate to the current 8% to 9% growth trajectory. In the last fiscal year of the NDA government, 2003-04, the economy grew 8.5%.
Yet, the NDA government lost power to the UPA.
Today, Congress has only 153 of the 272 seats it needs for a majority in parliament. The UPA consists of 11 parties and still needs the outside support of half a dozen other parties to achieve a majority.
A dramatic example of the importance of coalition politics is provided by the role played by the southern regional party, the DMK, in 2004. It had been with the NDA in the 1999 election but switched allegiance to the UPA in the 2004 election. Its 16 seats, subtracted from the NDA and added to the UPA, provided the balance of votes the UPA needed to from the government.
In recent years, voters have returned state governments to power only when the latter have provided decisively good management and delivered perceptible improvement in living standards. Therefore, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat represent a handful of the cases in which the electorate returned the incumbent governments back to power.
The key factor behind the change in voter attitude was the "revolution of rising expectations" unleashed by the reforms and the resulting growth acceleration.
In most cases, the electorate has handed punishing defeats to incumbents even if it has meant replacing them with another equally incompetent government. the voter remained in the grip of fatalism: kya karen, bhagwan ki marzi hai, but once reforms showed him that change was possible and that poverty was not God's will, he became more demanding. If the incumbent won't deliver fast enough, he would try someone else.
Moral of the story is : "All politics is local" as said by former US House Speaker Tip O'Neal. So is it in India. Within a week's time all the voters are going to try next set of Politicians with another set of Principles and it is rightly remarked that the "Government is basically chosen by all those educated and civilized citizens who do not vote, in addition to all those who mere exercise their right to vote".
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