Indian voters face tough choices in parliamentary elections

Voters in India are faced with tough choices as they go to the polls in the country's 16th parliamentary elections, Samanth Subramanian writes from New Delhi

Supporters hold up cut-outs of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) party symbol with images of MK Stalin, son and heir-apparent of M Karunanidhi, chief of DMK during a rally ahead of a general election in the southern Indian city of Chennai on April 6. Babu / ReutersShow less

NEW DELHI // India’s 16th parliamentary elections, which begins on Monday and runs over five weeks, presents a dilemma for R Vijaya.

For the past five years, Ms Vijaya, 67, a longtime resident of Delhi, and her husband, both pensioners, watched with dismay as the price of food and other daily commodities rose sharply. They grumbled regularly to each other, she said, about the corruption scandals tumbling out of the Congress-led government.

Her daughter, married with a young son, has told Ms Vijaya that the slowing economy — its growth reduced to a decade low of 4.5 per cent in 2012-13 — had hurt her husband’s work in investment banking.

"In any other election, I'd have known what to do," Ms Vijaya told The National. "I'd have voted for the opposition. Because if a government performs this badly, it deserves to be voted out, of course."

But the opposition gives her pause, she said.

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) prime ministerial aspirant is Narendra Modi, and she does not trust his secular credentials.

Mr Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, is a controversial candidate. He has tried — with some success — to convince India’s voters that he stands for clean and efficient governance, touting the “Gujarat model” of economic growth.

But he has not managed to rid himself of the stain of religious riots that occurred under his watch in Gujarat in 2002.

Nearly 2,000 Muslims and 250 Hindus died in the riots. Mr Modi’s critics accuse him of allowing — or even abetting — the anti-Muslim violence.

“These are the choices we have in front of us today in India,” Ms Vijaya said, with a sigh. “It isn’t easy to know what to do.”

Opinion polls conducted through the campaign season have shown that a similar confusion prevails across India. No poll has showed either the Congress or the BJP earning an outright majority in the 543-seat Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament.

But polls also suggest that Congress will see fewer votes, and that the BJP, by coming together with smaller parties, will be able to cobble together enough of a coalition to form the government.

“The morale is very low, within the Congress,” said one member of the party’s communications team, who asked to remain anonymous. “We know we’re going to lose badly. If we drop below 100 seats, I think you’ll see pretty drastic internal changes.”

Discontent with Congress is particularly strong among India’s business community and several leading corporate leaders have voiced their support for Mr Modi because of his pro-business stance.

Mohit Satyanand, an investment analyst in New Delhi, said the Congress-led government had, over the past five years, made India a haven for crony capitalism.

“The climate has deteriorated such that it’s virtually impossible to do business without pay-offs,” Mr Satyanand said. “So what’s the tipping point here? When do you turn around and say: ‘It’s too much. It’s impossible to do business like this’?”

Ram Prasad Yadav, who drives a taxi in the northern Indian city of Lucknow, said that he is not alone in being angry at Congress.

His taxi was rented a few times by entourages of Congress politicians and he has come to dislike his passengers and their entitled attitudes.

“So many of my friends and members of my family feel this way,” Mr Yadav said. “We feel that the Congress politicians have just enriched themselves at the expense of the country.”

He claimed to know many people who are planning to vote for the BJP because they want to see Mr Modi come to power.

“We think Modi will make a difference to the country, in a good way,” he said. “And the riots were so long ago. There were even riots here in Uttar Pradesh last year. These things keep happening in India, clearly.”

There are other parties in the fray as well. The new Aam Aadmi Party, created on an anti-corruption platform, continues to ride a wave of popular support. Although just a year-and-a-half old, Aam Aadmi is ambitiously fielding candidates from more than 400 constituencies.

Arvind Kejriwal, the founder of the Aam Aadmi Party, has dismissed the notion that a victory for Mr Modi is a foregone conclusion.

“There is no Modi wave,” Mr Kejriwal said during a speech in Mumbai last month. “People are angry. It is only the wave of people’s anger.”

An assortment of regional parties — strong in their respective states but with a weak national presence — and leftist parties might also get over their differences and form a coalition.

One such alliance, called the Third Front, involving the left and the samajwadi party among others, flickered into being for two brief weeks before crumbling due to infighting.

“But these regional parties will be more important if the Congress or the BJP cross 150 seats by themselves,” said Peer Mohamed, a Chennai-based political analyst. “Then they’ll try to poach these parties into their coalition.”

“Invariably this is what has happened in the past,” Mr Mohamed said. “It’s the politics of convenience. The temptation of power — the offer of a cabinet position, or something like that — will prove too great.”