Polls Apart, They Abstain

AS the country heads for the 12th general election, the Indian middle class—or the ruling elite as it is often described—appears indifferent. Constituting approximately 15 per cent of the urban Indian population, this affluent society is isolated by macaroni, marginalised by the Mayawati syndrome, marked by an upwardly mobile gaze and a semi-glorious political inheritance. Notwithstanding the bourgeois revolution in 1947, today significant sections of the descendants of the early nationalists couldn't care less about who occupies Parliament. Says chief election commissioner M.S. Gill: "The cocktail circuit does not realise that they must bear some responsibility for the problems being faced today. After all, this class has ruled for the last 40 years."

 Gaze on the catalogue of middle-class political irrelevance. According to the Centre for Study of Developing Societies' 1996 National Election Survey, while there was a quantum leap in the participation of the lower castes and the poor in voting, the voter turnout among middle-class graduates had decreased substantially. In an odds-on analysis, between 1971 and 1996, compared to the upper class Hindu voter, the probability of voter turnout among Hindu OBCs was 2 per cent higher, for scheduled castes 28 per cent higher, and for scheduled tribes 6 per cent higher. Compared to the rich, the probable voter turnout among the very poor was 58 per cent higher, while for illiterates, compared to graduates, the probable turnout was 19 per cent higher. At the same time in the 1996 poll, the voter turnout among middle-class graduates fell by 5 per cent below the national average (58 per cent). As adwoman Alka Chadha succinctly puts it: "It's just not worth it to stand in a queue and vote for the same people who'll make the same mess."

Even in the Lok Sabha, bourgeois fortunes seem to be faltering. As per figures made available to constitutional expert Subhash C. Kashyap, while journalists and writers made up 10.4 per cent of the first Lok Sabha, by the 10th Lok Sabha their share had dwindled to 2.17 per cent. Lawyers made up 35.6 per cent of the first Lok Sabha, but by the 10th Lok Sabha their share had fallen to 16.34. And the share of agriculturists, who made up 22.5 per cent of the first Lok Sabha, rose to 32.09 per cent by the 10th Lok Sabha; in the 11th Lok Sabha almost 52 per cent were farmers.

 But was it not the 'intelligentsia', the microscopic minority of upper-caste, pukka-house dwelling and vehicle-owning people with at least a high school education that was in the forefront of nationalism in the 1940s? Was it not the much vilified metropolitan elite that, in spite of deep-seated conservative impulses about the need for a strong state and tough laws, rose up against the Emergency? What happened? Simple. Democracy happened. As power becomes the repository of 'the mob', the middle class faces a crisis. Incapable of collective action in the absence of an ideology and alienated from the state, the urban middle class is marooned, says diplomat Pawan Verma who is writing a book on the Indian middle class. "The urban educated middle class," agrees psephologist Yogendra Yadav, "is the biggest loser of democracy. "

But are our protagonists, the high babus of the bureaucratic steel frame, foreign-returned practitioners of the law and economic strategy, the Hinglish-speaking city slickers, the newly-acquired Cielo racing executives, the serious New Professionals, the impatient let'sget-the-show-on-the-roaders, those committed to order and status quo not to mention the occasional biryani and beer, all evil elitists? Or are they simply victims of mass politics?

 "Look," says writer Sharmila Shah, "I've never voted and I don't intend to start now. I can't stand these disgraceful, money-mongering politicians. They don't identify with anything that I think is important, like protecting one's heritage, historical monuments, for hospitals or for schools, so what's the point of voting? A government that doesn't think twice about trying to put up casinos near historical monuments before looking after health and drinking water for neighbouring villages is not a government that I identify with."

 "My vote just doesn't seem to make any difference!" adds entrepreneur Ketaki Kumar. "It's the vote of those poor people—bribed and threatened as they are—which swings things. What's my vote compared to the money power, those terrible politician-goon nexuses, those religious fundamentalists? We represent such a small percentage, we are such a minority. We don't matter in anyone's scheme of things. No, I don't vote because the values I was brought up to believe in don't seem to matter."

Why such disillusionment in the ranks of the great and the good, those who, by their education and, as sociologist D.L. Sheth puts it, inclination to be liberal-democratic, should be the first to mark the ballot? John Kenneth Galbraith in his book Culture of Contentment used the phrase "secession of the successful" for the tendency of affluent sections of the population to secede from the state, relying on, as he articulated in The Affluent Society, "private services for their well-being, private education, personal security guards, private recreational facilities, and private transportation, combined with a deep moral indignation over the invasion of liberty by taxes."

 But hang on a minute, are the affluent in India comparable to Galbraith's affluent? "Certainly not," says architect Raj Kulkarni. "We have serious problems. School admissions are a massive problem, what about safe and regular drinking water, what about security from crime, what about the constant threat of disease and the lack of health care for those cannot afford deluxe hospitals? What about these problems? Don't they matter at all or are they simply dismissed because the middle class is not a 'vote bank', because no politician today stands up and says that he represents the middle class. We are the Nowhere People." "There is certainly a feeling," notes former Delhi Police chief Ved Marwah, "among the middle class that their concerns don't matter, that their vote will be wasted anyway.

I sometimes wonder whether my vote will do any good to anybody. There is a tremendous polarisation between classes and castes in India and the middle class has become too selfish." Sheth points out that although it is difficult to generalise, as the middle class is not a homogenous group yet, there seems to be a lack of acceptance of representative democracy. The politics of numbers bring upfront the lower classes, whom the middle people are not prepared to recognise as its leaders. "But there is certainly a feeling that why should I, given my education and upper caste and class background, vote for an uncouth and uneducated system?" he says. In any case, most educated urbanites have that vital asset, 'connections' which enables them to bypass the vote; they have 'influence' without having to decide on parties.

Yadav provides an example of how middle-class boredom sometimes confuses observers about popular apathy to elections. During the Delhi elections in 1993, The Pioneer newspaper carried a story on voting apathy. But on the same evening, Delhi recorded a record turnout of voters. "Clearly the circle that the journalist was moving in was not the circle that came out to vote," he concludes.

So should we roundly condemn the nonvoting classes as rich, disdainful of the vote and protected by old school or old caste ties? Or should we sympathise with them as disillusioned with money and muscle politics, clinging to textbook definitions of democratic behaviour? According to a political scientist, what the middle class defines as democracy—that is, learned (preferably good looking) leaders, speaking well, conducting parliamentary business with studied decorum—is in fact aristocracy, not democracy. Democracy is the rule of the mob, it is the rule of those who are unqualified to rule, of those who are vulgar, ugly and uncultured. That's the unpalatable truth that the middle class must swallow.

So as the country goes to the polls, perhaps we should write a manifesto for the non-voting class. Sure, we can complain of the decline of institutions and the fall in formal standards, such as in the recent violence in the UP assembly; but the stark choice for the middle class to decide is whether or not it is democratic. In any case, Verma says, in India to secede is an illusion, there's no getting away to your own little world. The middle class better forget the past, org-anise itself into collectives, and jump in—either into the state or into civil activity—otherwise all it will be left with will be a cell-phone with not too many people to call.