From India's largest newsroom, I'm Arun George and this is The Times of India Podcast. But vote, please. We should never be sad in the vote. It's also hot summer in many parts of India with warnings of heat waves in many states. But is that what's affecting turnouts? And also, does it just feel
like campaigns are just very low key? Many commentators have observed that this election just feels less energetic than previous ones and the turnouts reflect that fewer voters are making their way to the polling booths than the last general election. But what are the implications of this? To decode that, we spoke with Nilanjan Sarkar, who is a senior fellow at the Centre
for Policy Research in Delhi. Nilanjan admits that there's much less energy in this national election than he remembers in the past and explains why it could be a worry for the BJP and Narendra Modi who claim to be aiming to win 400 out of 543 seats in the Lok Sabha. He also explained how he views the biggest headlines from the campaign trail so far, which is Narendra Modi's
speech targeting Muslims and the Congress manifesto. We started by asking Nilanjan about what explains a seemingly lacklustre election this year. There has been some commentary about this but does this election campaign feel a slightly more lacklustre one compared to even the ones we've seen in 2014 and 2019? And is it just because we have
an election that's spread over nearly two months? So I think we have had long elections in the past. There is no doubt that there is much less energy in this election. At least in the first phase of the election polls, we've seen a pretty significant decrease in
turnout. That is a bit unusual given what we've seen in the last two national elections, where both in 2014 and 2019, we saw increases in turnout, sometimes very, very significant at the constituency level. And second, it being associated with the sort of a wave -like support for the BJP. The ability of the BJP to mobilize voters around broad -based issues in 2014, anti
-corruption, in 2019, Balakot, Pakistan. We seem to be missing that kind of wave -like energy this time in 2024. If there is a lack of energy and sort of turnout, what does it mean then? How does a low turnout, if this continues, this kind of turnout continues, what is the sort of outlook then? First, let me talk about what the data has said in recent history in national
elections. And secondly, some of the micro foundations of why we may be seeing higher or lower turnout. In the last two national elections, at the constituency level, a large increase in turnout from the previous election has been strongly associated with BJP support. So in 2014, that's anti -incumbent, right? Because the incumbent was Congress. But in 2019, that is in fact pro -incumbent, right? And
in many ways, 2019 breaks from the past. There was an association between higher -level turnout at the constituency level, increases in turnout, and vote share for the opposition. So 2019 changes our priors in a few ways. It shows us that increased turnout may not always help the opposition. But secondly, it cements the fact that the BJP is the
mobilizing party par excellence in India. It might be because of resources, it might be because of message, it might be because of machinery. But in the last two elections, the wave -like support has benefited the BJP and been strongly associated with increases in turnout at the constituency level. At a micro level, we have to
try to understand why people might turn out. So we have a general rule in the study of politics and political science that when elections are competitive, you tend to see higher turnouts, right? So if I believe that in my seat, the election could go either way, then I'm emboldened to turn out because I might cast the deciding vote. When elections are largely uncompetitive, we tend to believe that turnouts drop. So
that's one plausible explanation. Now, who is turning out and who is not is a far more complicated question. Because if the story we believe is that the recent increase in turnout have been a function of the BJP's ability to get people to the polls, then it may stand to reason that the people now not showing up are people who are no
longer being mobilized by the BJP. But it may also be that you have a fragmented sort of demoralized opposition in many places and people are simply not turning out for the opposition because they don't believe the election can be competitive even at the constituency level. So that's a bit of a mystery. We don't know. We will find out, obviously, when we see the results.
But suffice to say that the lack of energy, the lack of real mobilization of voters to get to the polling booth is something that is very new in the Modi era. Also, this sort of nine phase election that drags out over two months. This comes just before the BJP plans to rule out this whole one nation one election proposal. Would this election then effectively show you that that's a really difficult
thing to do anytime in the near future? It depends on how you read the dragging out of the election. Right. So it is indeed true that elections have gotten longer in India. So we're really sort of extending the periods very, very significantly. One story is that the reason for this is increases challenges in security and lack of resources for the kinds of logistics that are
required to run a fair election. In which case, I would agree that it is very, very hard to imagine a story in which you can have one nation one election and run it in one shot, right? Because there's exponential growth in the kind of complexity of fielding an election
when you have one nation one election. The other story though is of, you know, somewhat institutional capture that the longer elections and this actually occurred started occurring even before the BJP came into power, sort of allows the incumbent party to use other institutions, the media in various ways to, you know, sort of aggregate
benefits and correct course over time. Now, in that case, the length of election may not tell us much about the feasibility of one nation one election. I think the more complicated question about one nation one election is that even in the recent past, in fact, especially in the recent past, we have had governments falling,
switching, so on and so forth. So if you don't have a system in which you have regular polls every year or from time to time, how do you deal with the extraordinary turnover in governments that you're seeing at the state level? The reason why sort of bring this up is that the entire question and the entire answer to the question is
about logistics. And the only thing that has not been spelled out, lots of people have all kinds of grand theories about how much it will cost and what is the economy like, nobody has spelled out the logistics of one nation one election. And until that's spelled out, it's very hard to imagine that it's feasible. You mentioned the fact that a
longer election also allows for course correction. Is that something that could benefit the opposition as much as the ruling party? It could, obviously. Everybody gets to course correct. Everybody gets to see sort of past results. We tend to believe it benefits the incumbent for the simple fact that the incumbent has many more resources at their disposal.
In this case, quite literally because the BJP is by far the richest party in India. But by resources, I mean state institutions, media control to explain why and the ways in which things might matter. From a political actor during the model code of conduct that governs elections, no kind of policy declaration
or policy decision is plausible. But state institutions are not necessarily prevented from taking actions that may have some basis in politics. So West Bengal is a very good example where the High Court has taken a decision at this time on a potential educational and teaching scam, which may or may not adversely affect
the TMC. But it is a tool that is at the disposal of the ruling party that may have some control over state institutions that is not available to the opposition. And so in so far as large policy shifts or declarations or legal actions or police actions can affect behaviors of the electorate, the incumbent
tends to be in a stronger position. Where the opposition may have something going for it, at least as we were walking into the 2024 national election, the imagination was the opposition has no chance that this is going to be sort of a real mess. We are all looking romp for the BJP. We already see that in the first phase, energy has been low. There are stories, narratives that perhaps in certain places
the BJP is nervous. I tend to dismiss those stories, but many people might believe them. If the opposition can build a narrative over phases that in fact the ruling party is getting nervous, it is no longer sure. You can see a longer election like this create kind of wave like benefits for the opposition by the time we get to the later phases
five, six, seven. So that's an open question. I think we still have a long way to go. With Narendra Modi after that first phase of voting and more importantly while campaigning in North India, he made this relatively uncharacteristic direct attack at the Muslim community. Whereas he's now more known for the indirect attacks rather than a straightforward attack. How surprised were you by that? I do think it was surprising.
We can expose justify anything that is sort of the character of pundits and scholars, but it was quite a break from what we have seen in the past. What is the need for this kind of aggression? Now, what I would say is that it is less about whether the BJP is winning or losing. That is a very murky calculation, but it is more about this sheer lack of
energy that we're seeing in the election. Polarization, particularly polarization that is derived from the top is sort of energy on the cheap. People get passionate and emotional about Hindu Muslim things. So from that lens, I do see what the logic was. I think there's a second thing that we have not been talking about enough and it is a byproduct of the first, which is sort
of low national energy. The BJP is at its strongest when it is a national election in all senses, that it is an election in which the issues that are coming forward are national nature, national security, balacrups, corruption at a national level and the
kinds of scams. Once elections get more regionalized and regional factors come into play, then the BJP is not necessarily playing its strongest game because some of the state level units
of the BJP are quite a bit weaker. So when we look at states like West Bengal, which we just talked about earlier, where you have a dominant party as a regional party, there's a real need to make the discourse something more national like Hindu Muslim and make sure that the discourse doesn't become overly regional in which the BJP will be playing
sort of from the back foot. We have to understand that the kind of course correction that perhaps the BJP needs because of low energy is not simply to get energy up on some sort of national social issue as Hindu Muslim, but also to decrease the likelihood that a voter is thinking about regional issues and not national issues when she or
he goes to the polling booth. One of the things that we've seen in the last couple of national elections, especially the last national election, is that the BJP outperforms itself at the state level between state and national elections by double digits. So you might have a state in which the BJP gets 42 % of the vote share in a state election, but it might jump to 55 % or 60 % in the
national elections in that same state. The BJP is trying to manufacture those kinds of growths in vote share percentage because that's what is required to get those kinds of sweeps, those 300 plus or Charso -Parr kind of seats that the BJP is claiming to get.
For you, does that also then explain why a lot of Narendra Modi speeches deal with issues that are in the Congress manifesto and less say on future or even past achievements to that extent, that it seems to be nitpicking on every line of a Congress manifesto, whereas a lot of battles, like you're saying, will be fought at the state level with perhaps more regional parties than just the
Congress? I think on one level, even this discussion speaks to the extraordinary ability of Modi to set the agenda. Because before this moment, whoever cared about party manifestos, I mean, let's be brutally honest, right? I mean, this is the one thing that nobody cares about, right? But now all of a sudden it's become a key issue, which is line by line, what did Congress write in its
manifesto? Perhaps even when they were writing their manifesto, they couldn't have possibly imagined that line by line, they would be scrutinized for which word they use, minority, Muslim, cash, this, that. That is now the world that we are in, right? So there are two key elements to this kind of attack, right? So the first is, of course, the linking of the Congress
party to a certain set of social ideologies, right? So the linking of Hindu Muslim division to the Congress party, essentially not taking the right side, taking the Muslim side as opposed to the Hindu side, right? That's a very clear part of the messaging. The second part of the messaging, which is importantly crafted, is that
the opposition is still Congress. So it's that story I said about regional and national, that why should you vote for me in Aindramudi or BJP, if I'm sitting in a state like West Bengal, or if I am sitting in a state like Urissa, even if the Congress is not a player in your constituency.
So you definitely want to vote for the BJP so that the Congress doesn't take power at the center, even though Congress is not a player where you are. So it sets the agenda in two ways. It makes a link between a social cleavage and the political parties, but it also diminishes the role of regional actors, which have the capacity to do a lot of damage to the BJP and
the kinds of numbers it is aiming for. With the speech about Muslims, which was the controversial one, the election commission after that has now stepped in to caution all star campaigners across parties where the BJP Congress. How do you view that criticism given the regulator is facing criticism for not responding earlier? And we also have reports now that we already know what they're going to say with
regard to religious issues being raked out. So we have a very basic principle. Institutions fundamentally do care about their legitimacy. Within the ambit of being a legitimate institution, there's a lot of flexibility. Such a direct communal attack, which is essentially what we're saying happened in Prime Minister Modi's speech. For the election commission to simply not say anything in any way would be a huge
loss of face. Insofar as it is important for India as a whole to project that it has free and fair elections, it is important for the election commission to be seen as being relatively legitimate. It also cuts the other way for the BJP and for Prime Minister Modi to demonstrate that its rule has been legitimate. It needs to make sure that the election commission is
seen as relatively legitimate. And so this is a situation in which it is incentive compatible for both the BJP and the Modi and the election commission to at least make noises about sanctioning. The question is whether there's any bite to the sanction, even after the election commission says any of this. Do we somehow believe that Prime Minister Modi will be
barred from campaigning or barred from running? It's very unlikely and it would probably cause a lot of violence on the streets if it happened. So if there is no stick, despite all of these noises, is it enough to resurrect the credibility of the election commission, the legitimacy of the election commission? I don't know. I always expected that they would make these kinds of noises. I don't imagine that in the
minds of voters it is nearly enough. Do voters really care about something like the election commission strictures? Like you said, it's like it never has bite. Does that then make it also like the sort of umpire who just sort of whistles but doesn't take out a card in a football game? It just stops the game and says that's not right and everyone just keeps playing as they were. We've seen a long term decline
in the legitimacy of the election commission. So we start from tea in Sashen, we have Kureishi, we have these sort of personalities in fact that we associate with the election commission and fair elections. And so you know in many of those earlier surveys, 90s, early 2000s, you would see that actually the election commission was seen as an
extremely legitimate organization. Not just because of survey response, I think even today in surveys you'll see that they'll say that, but genuinely in all kinds of data, you know, qualitative data collection and so on and so forth. To a great extent that has fallen apart. I think that people do believe the average person you speak to when you're doing field work does believe that the selection of people on the election
commission is biased. There is something that I do not believe but there is a belief among certain set of people, even those who support the BJP, that the EVMs, the electronic voting machines are not entirely fair. And there certainly is a view and perhaps not without reason that the set of rules that govern who can do what during the election are biased against the opposition to a greater
extent today than they have been in the past. Now when those are things that the voter or the citizen fundamentally feels irrespective of how they answer to a survey question. They don't believe that the institution is as legitimate as it was before. So I agree that they were always limited in what they could do in the model code of conduct and how much they could actually force
the party to behave in a particular way. But in more fundamental ways I think the average citizen, the average voter questions of legitimacy of the election commission today. Nilanjan, the Congress has portrayed to have sort of tied itself into knots over this whole redistribution of wealth issue with like you said a manifesto that no one had read till it came up in the campaign rallies.
And then you have the India overseas Congress leader talking about it and it's a whole big thing all over again. How do you view what the Congress is facing on the campaign trail and how do you see that dealing with it so far? So the easiest way of putting this I think is that it is a real missed
opportunity for the Congress party. I think the one thing that plays across the political spectrum, across the social spectrum in India is rising social inequality. We can define it in economy, we can define it in other ways, English, non -English. You hear it on the ground everywhere. And so one of the reasons why for instance the farmers protest was so successful, they very quickly built a narrative about this is not
just about MSP. This is also about Adani and Ambani and you know all of what that represents. Field work and later quantitative survey data has shown that there actually is quite a bit of sympathy for the farmers even among people who are not directly affected by the actual economic demands. So this is the issue that has huge resonance on the ground and in fact it is the single issue that can
do the most damage to Modi and the BJP. He is not acting in the interest of the median or average citizen and is acting in the interest of a small set of moneyed people or otherwise powerful people. That is the day the BJP gets decimated at the polls and everybody understands that.
Then Modi understands that. You know there is an interesting passage in Prashant Jaha's book about this where soon after winning in 2014 Rahul Gandhi had made the jaibe ki sudh bhut ki sargah. And Modi transformed himself as a Neta who reached out to
the poor to a much greater extent. And so even from its very earliest days this version of the BJP and this version of Prime Minister Modi has understood that the undoing and the unraveling can be around issues of economic and social inequality. So when issues like inheritance taxes, estate taxes and everything and anything that
comes around it come into play. If one had put a little bit of thought into it, built an intelligent campaign around it, it actually could have had a lot of resonance on the ground. That simply is not something that we see today. With the India coalition that we have seen, it sort of fractured just before the elections started where you have the PDP NC sort of
breaking ranks suddenly. You have seen all these sort of random fishers pop up just before the elections. How do you view that campaign so far in as much as a sort of united coalition? For the opposition, I genuinely view it as a blessing in disguise. I did this calculation where it took 303 seats that the BJP won in 2019. And in those seats, I added the vote shares of the second and third place
party. I didn't even care if it was in the India coalition. The BJP only lost an extra 30 or 40 seats. Its vote margins were so high that the third place party very rarely made a difference at the constituency level. So given the kinds of vote shares the BJP was getting and the seats in which it contested, it's very unlikely that irrespective of whether a coalition was formed or not, that there would be much of a
difference. The first thing is that it was always understood that the BJP's vote share has to drop if you are to weaken the electoral force that is the BJP. Now, two things have happened because there is no fixed coalition, there is no single actor to go after. You can go after the Congress manifesto but by definition you have not also gone after UP and TMC and many
of these other parties. They can still do a lot of damage at the regional level. The second thing that happened and there is some evidence for this, that even if at the national level you were not able to create an alliance, at more regional levels it does seem like local units of the Congress party and some of what would have been in the India coalition have built tactical alliances. So in that way it's been a
win -win for the opposition. I don't think that the India coalition could ever have been a single national idea that was going to do so much damage to the BJP that its vote share was going to drop significantly. On the other hand it was giving a very big target to Prime Minister Modi who is the most charismatic and popular politician in India to target the opposition.
So this fragmentation has kind of made it harder for the BJP to deal with the opposition. Okay, we just now two phases into again a very long election. What do you watch for in the coming days? I'm going to go back to this idea of why do I care so much about energy and turnout at the elections. Let's assume for one second that
turnout and energy levels stay where they are. As we speak today, energy levels are incredibly low, turnouts have been coming down. Let us say further that the BJP actually wins 350 seats out of 543. There would be a massive electoral triumph, right? Not seen since the mid 1980s after the assassination of Indira Gandhi. Do we believe that these 350 seats would have as much legitimacy and energy behind
it as the Congresses win in the mid 1980s? Or for that matter these 350 seats would be seen as much of an electoral triumph as the 282 in 2014 and the 303 in 2019. I don't think so. And so the BJP and this version of the BJP is having a certain existential crisis where you have been built as an electoral juggernaut, but simply winning elections by a large margin is not helping
your underlying legitimacy. And one of the things that has happened with largely uncompetitive elections, the role of state institutions and politics, is that the sheer legitimacy of parliamentary politics has become much lesser. And today if you are in the opposition, again the farmers are a good example of this. Do you try to work through a political opposition or do
you take to the streets? So today the political opposition or the social opposition understands that it is better to use non -parliamentary means to register your grievance than it is to use parliamentary means. And so the reason why I care about things like turnout and energy is not just about what it says about the BJP or the Congress, but what it says about the legitimacy of parliamentary politics in India as a
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