We are a day away from state assembly elections in Haryana and Maharashtra; the latter being my home state and housing a significant chunk within my social circle, has seen a noticeable banter around it - what with an unconventional choice for the CM completing a full term in spite of obstacles within and outside his party, traditional derailment techniques applied by the liberal ecosystem and national context to a state election. Numerous reactions are coming through and they have triggered a fairly old recurring thought in my head that I keep pondering upon every once in a while - the relationship between the Traditional Indian Middle class (TIMC) and politics. This blog is an attempt to express my frank, brutal and naked understanding of a fairly common phenomena in our politics : why does the general politician (irrespective of any affiliation, ideology, caste, background etc) not take this TIMC that seriously as much as he/she does the other socio-economic groups? (Bonus: what can it do to change it!)
Before I state a few observations, I shall declare outright - even I am part of the TIMC, even I get frustrated at times and even I agree on certain common grouses such as taxation, reservation etc of fellow TIMC members. There are a host of issues to be fixed from the "other side" but I am a person who likes to continuously focus on what can be fixed within for that is the pace one can genuinely control. Importantly so, that busts the "expectations of morality" and helps looking at the factors around us as they should be - transactional and subject to the laws of basic economics and rationality.
TIMC's greatest expectation is that the political class must do what is "fair" and with that expectation breached time and again, frustration sets in. However, let me not mince words here when I say that a politician's single greatest focus is "winning elections" - everything else is secondary - from setting up good infrastructure to robbing the exchequer blank, from providing a robust economy to operationalizing smuggling dens & liquor stations, from securing our borders to selling our soldiers down the river et cetera. Elections are generally won by winning the highest percentage of votes and the buck stops there. In spite of increased voter awareness, check out the sample reactions I have gotten over voting in these elections - "the queue at the polling booth is too long", "I have office to attend to", "my client needs me", "I can't get up so early to vote", "I have a vacation planned", "I don't know where my polling booth is", "I am not in the mood", "this is not the national election" and the list goes on. So, if the TIMC is not going to manage a significant voting mass, not be serious about their own opinions or choices, not take every election seriously, it will not be taken seriously - simple enough, right?
Assuming that the TIMC does manage to get off the blocks and starts voting seriously & regularly and gives the indication to the general politician that TIMC's opinions matter as well, what happens then? Are TIMC voting patterns reliable? Are TIMC voting patterns discernible? The answer to that is a big fat NO! The TIMC is the proverbial dog caught on the barn's barbed fence - neither does it die there nor does it walk free of it; in fact, it continues to whine and whimper on the fence! There are stark examples for this very much visible in the past 5-6 years:
1. Decades of caste based reservations that are fueled by deliberate poverty; then comes a refreshing change of economic reservations (a one up even if not the ideal), but we see the TIMC whining!
2. A Brahmin CM does a fine balancing act in a politically charged landmine of Maratha reservations facing odds from all angles, but TIMC is still whining! (As if any other CM is going to abolish reservations! Duh!)
3. We are saving more than ever before on our tax costs through numerous incentives, allowances, exemption changes & more, but the TIMC is still whining! (As if the savings were greater earlier and tax paid was put to constructive use!)
4. No other political organisation is even talking about environmental protection and balancing of environment with development except the BJP which is backed with dedicated fund investments in compensatory reforestation. Yet one foreign funded NGO protest, viz. Aarey, is enough to sucker the TIMC into a derailment agenda and we see chatter on NOTA, abusing of the CM or MMRC MD Ashwini Bhide not even respecting the travel load that stands to be reduced; in effect, the TIMC is still whining!
5. It is only after the likes of notebandi, GST, IBC etc that the banking mess started getting rectified with the taxpayer and shareholder money receiving the respect it deserves; this means a lot of muck is going to be thrown up needing cleaning - PNB, PMC banks as examples, but the TIMC is still whining!
These are few of many reasons why the TIMC has never been taken seriously in decades of political battles by parties such as I(A)NC, NCP, SP, BSP and a plethora of other left leaning parties controlling our democracy for so many years - these parties have always known the whiny nature of the TIMC, they have always known the fickle behaviour there is and hence there is no reliability there. They contrast this with other two income groups:
1. The lower income group sticks to a cause or an ideal such as caste, reservations, socialist freebies, relaxation in rule breaking and a host of others; that is why the parties I had named above are able to build reliable, trustworthy voting blocks based on certain ideals. They are assured, by and large, that the group will stick with the cause, be loyal to it for a fairly long time making winning elections a process that can be calculated to an extent.
2. The higher income group trusts their money to keep them chugging along confident of striking deals with ruling dispensations as and when needed. So corporate perks in exchange for donations is a standard deal.
The sad predicament of the TIMC is that neither is this group willing to be patient & loyal nor is it in a position to strike monetary deals; we, the TIMC, tend to be so proud of our brains and education that we have political advice to offer at every turn of the track yet unable to comprehend necessary and fundamental political chess moves at play seen during the episodes of Maratha reservation or farmer protests or Aarey-style gimmicks or disproportionate PMC bank reactions. We are more concerned about holding our choice of leaders to supremely high moral standards while allowing their nasty opponents to run amok with even a teeny tiny percentage of those morals. We are concerned about arrogance of our elected leaders so much so that we are willing to allow entitled bunch of thieves a shot again for five years - free to drain our treasuries all over again. We are the same ones to question the importance and context of pressing issues such as Art. 370 in state elections refusing to acknowledge how it affects our soldiers from Maharashtra, their families or our families which are safer with a safer J&KL!
I will never claim that all that is being done by the leaders we have trusted is correct and blind trust is expected in their actions - No! However, I have to point out that we are in a transactional world and the transactions work on give and take. We finally have a set of leaders thanking us in parliament for our tax payments, for our rule obeying and for our contribution to social upliftment - isn't that the first step of a necessary shift? Changing directions takes time & efforts, especially if they are so polar they are today, and the TIMC's impatience is more detrimental to genuine issues than anything else. I connect this with a simple transactional arrangement I have with my wife - I understand zilch about cooking so I don't offer her unsolicited advise when it comes to managing our kitchen - she is free to decide that and hence more at ease assured I am not there breathing down her neck! Similarly, if the TIMC can't understand political chess - we should simply learn to shut up and trust those adept at it.
I have a simple suggestion to offer - can we resolve to become more reliable and trustworthy voters? Apart from resolving to vote every time, can we make a list of five issues we find important, categorize them - say first two are absolutely non-negotiable, next two can be worked out for and the last one is a bonus question for our leaders - they can choose to do it or not and we won't slit their throats over it! So our politicians know that even if they get the first two right, our vote will go into their kitty - pretty reasonable, I guess? There is a term in finance - the return on investment (RoI) - that applies to everything in life. If our annual tax payments & the political loyalty is the investment that is being sought, should we not be willing to wait for the returns to materialize? This impatience has resulted into us always making investments and then bailing out before the returns accrue. As a starting point, let us assume our annual tax payments are security agency fees to the Indian Army and our Intelligence Services to keep us secure from external enemies as they have just done today in retaliatory artillery fire! This is a fair cost for safety, eh? Let us embrace a fundamental fact of life - every choice is between two imperfect options; extraordinary expectations of perfection cut no ice at all! Let us try and work it ahead from there - become less whiny and more happy - for our own good!
Jai Hind!
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