Author: Rajesh Jain

I met a friend on one of my flights back from Delhi. He has a factory in Jammu and goes there often. One point he made in the conversation: doing business in J&K is different from doing business elsewhere in India. Case in point: the Indian Penal Code has a variant there called Ranbir Penal Code.

A simple point, but one that stayed with me: Kashmir is different from India. And then I thought: why should that be the case? Of course, there are historical precedents, but I think we ought to integrate J&K fully into India – one people, one of rule of law.

The conversation also brought back memories of my only visit to Kashmir as a 10-year-old with my parents and sister. We took the Jammu Tawi Express, and then went to  Srinagar, Gulmarg, Sonmarg. I still have a photo of all of us in the traditional dress. Hope to go there again soon.

Given the travelling I do, airports are natural transit points. And I cannot stop complaining about the inefficiencies and stupidities. I want to add one more to the list – the dumb security check.

They have the scanners installed but absolutely ignore the results of the scan. Instead of only checking those who beep when they pass through, every passenger is hand-checked by the security staff. Why then install expensive scanners when their output is going to be ignored? The result is that at peak travel hours the queue to pass through the security check becomes quite long at some airports (definitely, in Mumbai).

My point in these rants is not to be a complainant all the time, but to see how we can improve simple things that have a logical solution – if someone spends time to question the process. Politicians and airport staff don’t have to wait in the queues, so they don’t feel the pain. But, at least, they can think when they look around.

I read about Manohar’s in an article in Mint a couple months ago. I visited it recently looking for books on Indian politics and elections. Everything that Mint says about them is true – and more! The collection of books on India is absolutely amazing. I am still of the school that likes to look inside a book before deciding to buy it, so there could be no better way to spend an hour.

The staff (especially an old-timer, Rajaram) have an exceptional knowledge of books. All I had to go was to ask for a topic, and they would find me books.

So, if you have time some time next time you are in Delhi,  stop by Ansari Road and spend time at Manohar’s.

I was looking for data on past Indian elections – Lok Sabha and Assembly elections over the past 10 years. One obvious source is of course the Election Commission site but what they have is mostly PDFs and some XLS files (could not find XLS files for 2009-2011 Assembly elections). I am looking for the following:

• a website where I can do drill-down analysis , at the constituency level, see how the voting patterns have changed across Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in a particular constituency
• Raw XLS files for all Lok Sabha and Assembly elections from 1998 onwards (including the most recent ones). Like I said, the EC website doesn’t seem to have the last three years assembly elections XLS
• visualisation software recommendations that can help present the data in a way that can support decision-making

Any recommendations? Would any one of you be willing to work together with me to help create this by aggregating bits that are available?

My goal is to make a site that has all the info readily available for analysis and comparison. It will allow us to see how voting patterns have changed in India. Ideally, we should overlay this with socio-economic data at the constituency level.  If something exists, I’d like to see it. Else, let us work together to create it!

From two posts (Part 14 and Part 15) in the series “It’s Up To Us Now” that I wrote a year ago:

Let us first think about the change India needs.

India needs political leadership of the likes of Abraham Lincoln and Lee Kuan Yew. From that leadership will flow policy changes that we need as a country. The hard and soft foundations of a nation has to be engineered. The soft foundation encompasses national interest, the elimination of corruption, the elimination of artificially created divisions of castes and communities (which are today being used as ‘vote banks’), the creation of a truly modern education system, real economic, personal and political freedom, efficient markets, and so on.

The  hard foundation is about infrastructure that will ensure the urbanisation of India:  modern high-speed nationwide rail network, sufficient power generation capacity to meet the needs of an industrializing economy, ubiquitous affordable broadband access, efficient ports and airports, etc.

The hard and soft foundations will not only eliminate poverty but actually propel India to become a truly important participant in the global scene. To bring that about, India needs foresighted, intelligent, and dedicated leaders.

This kind political leadership exists in India. Such leaders are born once in a lifetime. India is fortunate to have a few such leaders. But they are not where they need to be.

Just to be clear: this leadership is not about photo-ops, but about getting things done. It is about working against the odds and delivering results. India has had many such leaders – but somehow they have been lost in the maze of cut-throat politics.

That is what Middle India’s change agents need to change. We need to ensure that these leaders can get to the top. We need to give them an environment for them to succeed. This is where the passionate few need to come together.

This week’s links:

• Social Media’s secret weapon – Email: by Fred Wilson. “The rise of alternative notification channels; sms, mobile push notifications, direct messages on twitter, facebook messaging, etc are going to move some of this kind of thing off of email over time. But today, if you want to drive retention and repeat usage, there isn’t a better way to do it than email.”
• A Long-Wave Theory on Today’s Digital Revolution: An interview with historian Elin Whitney-Smith in strategy+business. “There have been six information revolutions in human history. Each represents a major change in the organizational paradigm — a change in how people form themselves into groups.”
• Social Protection for a Changing India: A World Bank report.
• The perfect state: from Pragati. “What would a “Ramarajya” administration deliver? A good quality of life, where people live in good health, enjoy a good livelihood and dignity, appears to be the first element of good governance by Ramarajya standards.”
• Illusions of Democracy: by Esther Dyson. “The newly freed people of the Middle East must toughen their idealism with hard realism.”

Let us start with two facts. First, if one actually analyses the BJP’s Lok Sabha performance through the years (and a similar analysis can be done for the Congress), it will be seen that the party has won at least once in about 300 of the 543 Lok Sabha constituencies.

Second, the BJP is in power directly or with an ally in 9 states which account for 170 seats. The party is competitive in states with 219 seats, and almost absent in states with 154 seats. Thus, for the BJP, the pool of seats where it can hope to win is about 389 (170+219), with about 55-60 seats going to its three current allies (JD-U in Bihar, Shiv Sena in Maharashtra and Akali Dal in Punjab). That leaves the BJP competing to win in about 330 seats.

States in which the BJP can get allies are states where the BJP has little or no presence. Thus, there is little benefit for a party to ally with the BJP prior to the election. In fact, the perception has been created that an alliance with the BJP may cost the ally votes from specific communities.

So, the BJP’s best bet is to focus on these 330 seats and aim to win 225-250 of them. With the three present allies, they must aim to reach the half-way mark of 272 on their own. Only then can they deliver the governance and development to the country that they have been doing at the states.

For this, the BJP does not need a leader who can win more allies. In fact, according to me, it needs no more allies because none will come. On the contrary, the BJP needs a national leader who can help the party win the maximum number of seats in the ones they contest.

Much of the narrative that I have read post these Assembly elections is that the national parties (Congress and BJP) need to factor in coalition politics as the way forward since none of them are strong across the country. The Lok Sabha elections will be but an aggregation of the state electoral math – as has been the case in the past few elections. In fact, the last time a single party got a majority on its own was the Congress in 1984 led by Rajiv Gandhi after Indira Gandhi’s assassination.

I have a different take on this. I think various factors are coming together to create the foundation of a possible wave election in 2014. For one, look at the 90% hit rates that have happened in places in Bihar, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. (Assam came quite close.) The same concerns and issues have resonated across a state. I believe that something similar can happen nationally in 2014.

I will analyse the situation from BJP’s perspective. Currently, it has 116 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha. (The Congress has 206, and with its alliance partners about 273.) BJP cannot win by trying to ape the Congress. It has to tread a different, bold path – one that is counter-intuitive to what the commentators are saying.

The refrain seems to be that the BJP can only win about 150-175 seats on its own – the best performance came in 1998 and 1999 with 182 seats. It doesn’t have a presence in states with 150+ seats (TN, WB, Kerala, Andhra, North-East) and therefore needs allies, and therefore a leader that is acceptable to the allies. In other words, the BJP should opt for a leader who can maximise allies.

This approach is plain wrong.

Tomorrow: The BJP’s Path to 2014

The way India’s political system is structured, elections happen every year, sometimes multiple times in a year. So, some state or the other is always going to the polls every few months. In this situation, there is a sort of N+1 syndrome that creeps into policy-making – the hard decisions are put off because the next election is round the corner.

As a result, it is almost as if the Union government in India stumbles along. Because of these state elections, the oil companies haven’t increased the price of petrol and are losing hundreds of crores daily. Key reform bills are stuck because of either lack of initiative or because some regional alliance partner doesn’t want it to disturb the equation due to elections.

As a result, the engines of India’s growth have now become the states. With a central government that is paralysed and almost seems to be working on auto mode, the states are where the real innovations in policy and service delivery are taking place. We are seeing many states now starting to focus on better policies – for them, they have five years of clear runway to deliver.

Tomorrow: Allies or Alone

There are three takeaways that I see in this election.

The first is the importance of good governance and development, as perceived by people (the voters). They want more – well-paying jobs, better lives, greater opportunities. The government that can deliver this to them can hope to get re-elected. Anti-incumbency is not the norm. We are seeing this time and again – a government that can deliver can expect favourable verdicts.  In other words, performance matters.

The second is that corruption matters. For long, the belief was that voters are for the most part blind to corruption. But this time around, something tripped. Perhaps, it was the figure of Rs 1,76,000 crore in the 2G scam case, or it was a series of never-ending scams coming out one after another. Blatant corruption will never become the only issue, but it is an important consideration. In other words, politicians have a choice – be clean and hope to win, or be corrupt and make money for a single-term only.

The third takeaway is that local leadership matters. It is still astonishing how many elections are fought without strong leaders at the helm of their parties.  National leaders are important, but is also very important to have regional leaders who understand issues in their state better than the ones in Delhi ever can. Political parties will need to encourage the emergence of this second- and third-line of leadership if they want to create a sustainable advantage.

Tomorrow: The Powerful States