They’re not in it for small change

By HNN Election Desk

Terrorism, unemployment, inflation. These, along with education and law & order, are key concerns. But voters think most of our netas couldn’t care less, reveals a nationwide survey ahead of the polls

In a country as large and diverse as India it should come as no surprise that views on what the real issues are differ significantly across the spectrum. Take terrorism, for example. It emerged as the top concern in a nation-wide poll to determine the issues that are dominating the voter’s mind on the eve of the polls.

However, while 29% of urban Indians saw terror as the top issue, only 23% of rural respondents shared this view. In the west, including Mumbai, 33% said it was the most pressing concern, but in the north only 22% agreed. In the lowest income group (those with monthly incomes below Rs 1,000), a relatively low 18% voted terror as the single biggest problem and even among the highest earners (above Rs 25,000 pm) only 23% gave it top billing. In contrast, in the Rs 3,000-10,000 pm income group, 29% felt terror was the key issue.

Similar differences showed up in the voting on how important an issue employment is. Here, those polled in the south and west zones were more concerned — 26% and 25% respectively voting it the top issue — while the north and east (17% each) were less inclined to pick this as the number one issue. Urban voters saw joblessness as less of a problem than rural ones. Inflation was the biggest concern (27%) in the north, but was not even among the top five concerns in the east (7%). In the south and west too it was among the relatively less important issues. It worries urban voters more than rural ones, males less than females and the young (11% in the 18-25 age group) only about half as much as the old (22% in the 60-plus age bracket).

These three issues apart, education and law and order are others that figure most prominently in the responses across divides of gender, community, age, rural/urban and income levels. That environmental concern, at least in a spelt out fashion, is yet to grab the public imagination is evident from the fact that it had less than 1% voting for it as the top concern.

These findings of an IMRB survey done exclusively for TOI covering 6,000 respondents in India’s cities, towns and villages should provide political parties and candidates some pointers to what the voter is really seeking from the next government.

The bad news for the netas is that their own ratings are almost uniformly poor, as the charts here show. A Synovate India survey in 10 of the country’s biggest cities shows how all-pervasive the revulsion with the political class is and how much the leaders are regarded as a venal lot.

The even worse news for the parties — unless they read the writing on the wall — is that in most cities, Mumbai and Chennai providing the somewhat surprising exceptions, voters are convinced that they can force netas to mend their ways by voting out non-performing candidates in the coming elections.

While the overall proportion of respondents who felt this way was 54%, the figure was in the sixties in several cities like Lucknow, Pune, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad and 73% in Kolkata. The state assembly elections at the end of last year have already provided pointers to the new performanceconscious voter.

Will LS 2009 drive home the point further?