Straight Talk Analysis: Solutions Trump Ideology In India

When Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century is on the global bestselling list, it is safe to assume that people don't just acknowledge inequality passively but are also interested in understanding its disturbingly rampant existence and even doing something about it. Unease among ordinary citizens have resulted in occasional demonstrations too, such as the Occupy movement. 

This apparent discomfort over the skewed "system" has brewed for some time now, and not just in the United States. In fact in an interview, Piketty attributed some of the success of his book to the fact that there is a growing concern with rising inequality.
A Pew Research Center Poll released in December 2013 found that almost 75% of people in developing or emerging economies view inequality as "a very big problem". 

But even as concern over inequality reaches its peak, there is a decisive resurgence of the business-friendly rightwing, electorally speaking. Recent electoral outcomes (the most authoritative barometer of gauging citizens' mood) in the world's largest and oldest democracies, India and the US, have seen the re-emergence of two right-wing parties with resounding blows to those with center-left lineages: Democrats in the US and the Congress Party in India. 

So, given that inequality is a problem and inclusive development is universally desirable, are people trusting the economic right to put things in order? Have ordinary people reposed faith in markets to deliver all-encompassing development? As of now, this can only be an assumption, and given that ideology itself is perhaps no longer a factor in electoral choices, an assumption that risks being wide off the mark. 

As Frank Luntz wrote in The New York Times in the aftermath of the Republican romp in the US mid-term elections, "Americans don't care about Democratic solutions or Republican solutions. They just want common sense solutions that make everyday life a little bit easier." 

Transport that to India, and it's the exact same feeling. The Indian electorate today is practical-minded and looks for solutions to problems, rather than ideological alignments. Voters' loyalties are no longer fixed, let alone unconditional. The smart new electorate denies any party a cakewalk and punishes false or empty promises. They'll vote those who will promise "better days are coming" (Achhe din anne wale hain, the winning Bharatiya Janata Party's 2014 election slogan) and then walk the talk. 

It will be a fairly uphill task to analyse the BJP's astounding win in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections with scientific precision. But with the benefit of hindsight, it appears that it is the politics of aspiration, rather than that of cynicism, that won Narendra Modi the hearts and minds of ordinary Indians. 

In all his campaign speeches - and there were many - Modi would quickly venture from the obligatory anti-Congress rant into practicable solutions to India's problems, from the dismal public health to lack of value-added manufacturing, corruption and vested interests, to deficiencies in higher education; thus convincing the people that he has the practical solutions to India's endless problems. 

With India's rather awkward history of hero-worshipping, the fondness of Modi quickly turned out to reach insane levels with many expecting the alchemist to wave a magic wand and turn everything right. So far, things have moved with a much less divine or magical speed. 

As to the contention as to whether Indians really veneered to the right in their economic thinking when they voted this summer, perhaps it is only the economic historians who will have the most accurate stories to tell. However, the very fact that Modi won on a plank of "minimum government, maximum governance" is telling. Minimum government refers to the hackneyed concept of shrinking the state - from regulatory, welfare and other domains - a thinking which belongs to the economic right. 

The idea that "the government has no business being in business" is one that's held by the BJP and its [approximate] counterpart in the US, the Republicans. America's Grand Old Party, like the BJP, holds conservative familial, religious and socio-cultural views. Likewise their party-men wear their nationalism on the sleeves. 

The economic problems in India, as in America, and indeed across the world, are remarkably similar in terms of broad contours: inflation, lack of growth, unemployment, inequality. It is not as if these two countries serve to illuminate a global generalization. 

However, it is an interesting observation that wide-ranging disquiet over inequality has in recent times converged with the electoral triumph of the economic right in two of the world's most celebrated democracies.