Indian Politics & Policy Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2020 | Page 68

Indian Politics & Policy
ideological positions, only gut feelings
in response to a questionnaire that has
to be answered without much thought,
and people are entirely capable of entertaining
contradictory or mixed positions
on sets of issues.
Does majoritarian Hindu nationalism
as promoted by the BJP lead
to a cross-class Hindu consolidation of
opinion on a range of issues, including
economic questions, rendering class
cleavages unimportant? In addition to
this, what might explain the smallness
of cross-class differences of opinion?
Are there other reasons?
Some Theoretical Issues and
Possible Explanations for
Low Class Polarization
This raises various theoretical
questions. Why do the Lower
and Poor classes vote on broadly
the same lines as the Rich and Middle
classes? Is it because the SCs, STs, and
even OBCs, who are probably correlated
(with the first two categories probably
highly) with the Lower and Poor
classes, voted along these lines due to
Hindu consolidation in opposition to
minorities? We saw above that pluralist/accommodative
attitudes to minorities
are still dominant despite the
probable growth of anti-minority, primarily
anti-Muslim, attitudes to an extent
greater than in 2014. And to some
questions, the Rich and Middle classes
are slightly more minority-sympathetic
than the Lower and Poor. So we need to
look at the larger comparative literature
on class voting to search for explanations
as to why the working class and
poor vote, at certain times, for parties
traditionally based on better-off classes
and whose core platform reflects the
latter’s interests. Right-wing populism,
with its three components—anti-elite
attitudes, nativism/ethno-nationalism,
and authoritarianism 3 —comes to mind
in these times, but space constraints do
not allow further exploration.
There are two theoretical speculations
that we can make, and right now
the data only allow us to speculate; however,
speculation could possibly lead to
more definitive research. One possibly
profitable line of inquiry to follow is the
“poor voter paradox”—why do poor
voters in many countries routinely vote
for parties that represent the interests of
the better off? As Sridharan sums it up,
citing Thachil: “there are three explanations
in the literature—programmatic
redistributive shifts (like anti-poverty
programs) undertaken by elite parties,
patronage distribution, and ‘distracting’
appeals of identity politics.” 4 All three
factors appear to be in place in backdrop
of the 2019 BJP campaign. If we
look at the responses to the questions
on the economy and welfare programs,
we see that one-fifth of respondents
received some public funds just before
the election and significant slices of the
respondents (13–34 percent) received
some benefits from various welfare programs
over the first Modi term. These
could dilute class polarization and reinforce
pro-Modi attitudes especially
given the perception of strong and decisive
leadership and the lack of a unified
opposition coalition, and a certain
degree of growth of anti-minority sen-
64