The Changing Formula of Formula Politics
Manohar Manoj
We often hear the term “formula films,” which serve audiences a mix of action, music-romance, dialogues-locations, songs-dance. Similarly, in India’s democracy, formula politics has long been practiced. That is, the power of money, the dominance of musclemen, identity factors (emotional exploitation of caste, religion, region, language), freebies (loan waivers, free grain, electricity, water, bus travel), populist promises and oaths, displays of patriotism, and provocative, inciting, sensational speeches—these are all presented in their own ways by parties and electoral candidates to woo voters. It’s said that “everything is fair in love and war,” and now electoral politics should be added to this adage. Since political misadventures bring in ethnic, religious, linguistic, and regional frenzy, parties draw a dividing line among voters to create class friends and class enemies.
But currently, the formula of India’s electoral politics seems to be passing through a new transitional phase. In the journey of Indian democracy’s elections so far, new trends are now replacing old practices. Previously, parties used to prepare broad equations based on backward, Dalit, upper caste, and minority (Muslim) voters, and micro-equations based on specific castes. Now, that classification is starting to crack. Now, mainly three political classes are being highlighted: farmers, youth, and women. Among these, the women’s political class has become the most prominent. Farmers and youth were previously the emotional domains of political parties, but now the women’s voter gender group has emerged as a major political domain because, numerically, it is half the population. Appealing to the economic and emotional interests of this half of the population has become the biggest hotcake of Indian democratic elections. This group is now casting independent votes separate from their family’s vote. This was openly evident not only in the recently concluded Bihar assembly elections but also in the past assembly elections of Haryana, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, and Delhi.
This new gender identity politics is coated with the allure of the treasury. That is, the trend of freebies, which earlier appeared in the form of farmers’ loan waivers and free electricity, is now being provided as cheap food, free grain, and drinking water for the poor class consumers. Then came free residential electricity, water, and bus travel, whose real beginning was made by the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi, keeping in mind the middle-class and lower-middle-class voters here. This phenomenon is now on the path to becoming pan-India.
There is a fierce competition to provide monthly or lump-sum allowances to women, whether in the name of livelihood support, as scholarships for young women’s education, or for a girl’s marriage. Notably, this political idea of cash transfers for women has taken the form of schemes in various places, such as the Ladli Behna Yojana in Madhya Pradesh, the Dhan Lakshmi Yojana in some areas, or the Mahila Aajeevika Yojana in others. In this sequence, the Saini government in Haryana, the Shinde government in Maharashtra, and the Hemant Soren government in Jharkhand implemented these announcements to uplift women’s economic interests right before the last assembly elections. The result was that in all three states, the incumbent governments were re-elected. The same experiment has now been carried out by Bihar’s incumbent government, transferring a lump-sum amount of ten thousand rupees as livelihood earnings to 75 lakh women in the state.
Overall, freebies and “revdis” have emerged as the biggest formula in the electoral politics of Indian democracy right now. It is reported that the Bihar government had to transfer a total of 40,000 crore rupees for women’s livelihood support. Prior to this, the financial situations of Congress-ruled Karnataka, Himachal, and Telangana were adversely affected after starting this politics of revdis. Similarly, in Maharashtra, guaranteeing monthly allowances to women has placed a heavy burden on the state government’s treasury. The question is, how will this burden be managed? It may be noted that only a few states in the country have a share of their own revenue generation exceeding two-thirds of their total budget, including states like Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Odisha, and Chhattisgarh.
But in a state like Bihar, which is already incurring an annual revenue loss of about 5 to 10 thousand crore rupees due to prohibition, and where its own revenue income currently accounts for only 40 percent of its total budget, it will obviously have to bear the brunt of freebie culture even more—provided it receives additional financial strength from the double-engine government.
In reality, the question of balancing states’ income and expenditure is secondary. The fundamental question is: in India’s multi-party competitive democracy, what should be the broad scale of politics, especially electoral politics, and how can it be properly and sustainably determined? And on this basis, guidelines should be set for the income sources and expenditure heads of all three tiers of government. Just as limits on campaign expenditure for different elections in India were set to control the influence of money power in elections, candidature of charge-sheeted and charge-framed electoral candidates was restricted to eliminate the influence of muscle power. Similarly, courts have issued several rulings to prohibit caste-based rallies, communal rallies, and appeals based on other identity factors. In the same vein, the Representation of the People Act, 1952, is in force to prevent inflammatory and communal appeal speeches.
Likewise, two years ago, the Supreme Court, the Election Commission, and even the Prime Minister strongly advocated drawing a Lakshman Rekha (a line that cannot be crossed) for political parties’ manifestos regarding populism and revdi culture in elections. However, in a competitive electoral system, no party has yet agreed to this in the same way they haven’t agreed to One Nation, One Election. If we talk about Bihar, the ruling party spent 40,000 crore on its promise, while on the other hand, the Mahagathbandhan made an impossible-sounding promise of providing one government job in every household in the state. In other words, in this competitive electoral politics, the audacity of promises—especially through free revdis—has reached its peak.It’s true that the principle of a welfare state dictates that revenue should be collected through taxes from those with higher income and wealth and transferred to deprived groups. However, for this great principle, a well-structured and thoughtfully planned path must certainly be prescribed by the Constitution, legislature, government, and system to prevent any situation of political anarchy from arising. Although it’s not accurate to say that Bihar’s election result was solely due to the game of revdis, the trust in Nitish-led NDA also spoke volumes over the people—a fact that all political pundits had to acknowledge