04-09-2007, 07:06 PM
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--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo--> Going to town
Posted online: Monday, April 09, 2007 at 0000 hrs Print EmailCongress has let down ordinary city voters. It isnât a big hit among rural poor either
THEREâS now so much evidence that the urban vox populi is going against the Congress that a political observer from, say, Mars would be convinced that the party by now has a firm strategy. The Martian, of course, doesnât know the Congress. As a report in The Sunday Express on the Delhi municipal elections clearly pointed out, the <b>Congress seems to be harbouring a fantasy that cities are populated by the wealthy, who either donât vote or donât vote for the âpro-peopleâ Congress.</b> This thesis, as these columns have pointed out more than once, was born out of the excitement following the unexpected 2004 verdict. Farmers had supposedly voted the Congress in and they apparently wanted protection from rapacious market-wallahs.
Would that the Congress be a little rapacious about the market. It would help them, for example, with farmers keen to exploit market opportunities. It would also help them to connect with lower income urban groups, whose daily contact with market economics is often more than the better-off classes. Below middle class urban citizens, who include small entrepreneurs as well as many migrants for whom market-created jobs are vital, are not particularly comforted by statist interventions that protect public sector jobs from demands of efficiency or protect the better-off from utility rate hikes. They are also â and this is a tribute to political economic dynamism of reforms â aspirational. They donât want to live in cities as taken-for-granted background noise. They want to be heard. <b>They thought they had been heard when in 2004 - the wealthy as usual didnât vote in large numbers - their vote won the Congress a majority of the urban constituencies.</b>
The BJP was shocked at losing so much of the urban vote it and everyone else had thought will go to the party. The Congress didnât realise at all what it had been gifted. Indian democracy is nothing if not a ruthless reminder service. The reminders are coming in now. And it is not as if the Congress has done a fantastic job of cornering the rural poorâs vote either. With the exception of Andhra Pradesh, better performing states in the rural jobs programme are not Congress-ruled. Thatâs another statistic that would make sense on Mars, but not to the Congress.
editor@expressindia.com
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo--> Going to townPosted online: Monday, April 09, 2007 at 0000 hrs Print EmailCongress has let down ordinary city voters. It isnât a big hit among rural poor either
THEREâS now so much evidence that the urban vox populi is going against the Congress that a political observer from, say, Mars would be convinced that the party by now has a firm strategy. The Martian, of course, doesnât know the Congress. As a report in The Sunday Express on the Delhi municipal elections clearly pointed out, the <b>Congress seems to be harbouring a fantasy that cities are populated by the wealthy, who either donât vote or donât vote for the âpro-peopleâ Congress.</b> This thesis, as these columns have pointed out more than once, was born out of the excitement following the unexpected 2004 verdict. Farmers had supposedly voted the Congress in and they apparently wanted protection from rapacious market-wallahs.
Would that the Congress be a little rapacious about the market. It would help them, for example, with farmers keen to exploit market opportunities. It would also help them to connect with lower income urban groups, whose daily contact with market economics is often more than the better-off classes. Below middle class urban citizens, who include small entrepreneurs as well as many migrants for whom market-created jobs are vital, are not particularly comforted by statist interventions that protect public sector jobs from demands of efficiency or protect the better-off from utility rate hikes. They are also â and this is a tribute to political economic dynamism of reforms â aspirational. They donât want to live in cities as taken-for-granted background noise. They want to be heard. <b>They thought they had been heard when in 2004 - the wealthy as usual didnât vote in large numbers - their vote won the Congress a majority of the urban constituencies.</b>
The BJP was shocked at losing so much of the urban vote it and everyone else had thought will go to the party. The Congress didnât realise at all what it had been gifted. Indian democracy is nothing if not a ruthless reminder service. The reminders are coming in now. And it is not as if the Congress has done a fantastic job of cornering the rural poorâs vote either. With the exception of Andhra Pradesh, better performing states in the rural jobs programme are not Congress-ruled. Thatâs another statistic that would make sense on Mars, but not to the Congress.
editor@expressindia.com