100 Million New Voters are About to
Transform India They’re social media savvy, and they don’t vote like their parents.
By James Tapper, GlobalPost.com
Yet it is the older Modi, 63, who appears to have captured young people’s attention. “Opinion polling shows younger voters do prefer Narendra Modi to Rahul Gandhi more strongly than older voters,” Amitabh Dubey, the director of India research at Trusted Sources, an emerging markets research firm, told GlobalPost. “Whether that translates into actual votes remains to be seen.” Modi’s energetic campaigning, along with his story of economic development in the western state of Gujarat where he has been chief minister since 2001, seem to appeal to India’s youth. He has been an enthusiastic user of social media. With around 80 million Indians using Facebook, many of them young and urban, some studies say social media may prove a decisive factor in marginal constituencies. The white-bearded candidate, whose jibes at Gandhi as ‘shehzada’ or ‘crown prince’ — drawing attention to his family’s dynasty — go down well at election rallies, divides opinion among Indians over his role in anti-Muslim riots in 2002 in Gujarat. Some accuse him of turning a blind eye to the bloodshed in which about 2,000 people died. Yet the youngest of India’s new electors were only six years old when the riots happened. They seem to be more interested in his plans to create jobs and revive India’s economic growth. “India’s youth are much more aspirational and increasingly they realize that their aspirations are not going to be met,” said Professor Jayati Ghosh, who lectures in political economics at Delhi’s prestigious Jawalal Nehru University. “They are much less satisfied with the idea that they should vote along the same
With only a few weeks until India elects its next prime minister, the country’s “demographic dividend” — the young people who provide its best hope of becoming a major economic power — is about to become its democratic dividend. About 100 million Indians will be able to vote for the first time when the polling stations open on April 7. That’s almost as many as the 132 million Americans who voted in the last presidential elections. Most of those new voters will be aged 18 to 23 years old, too young for the last elections to the Lok Sabha, India’s Westminster-style parliament, in 2009. But the easy comparison with Western democracies hides the gargantuan task facing India’s Election Commission, tasked with giving the country’s 814 million registered voters their say. Although polls open on April 7, they don’t close until May 12, five weeks later. The election officials need another four days just to get the votes together, then start counting ballots to announce the results on May 16. So what impact could India’s youth have in this granddaddy of all elections? First, the candidates. The election is cast as a fight between Narendra Modi, the charismatic Hindu nationalist candidate for the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, and Rahul Gandhi, whose family has led the ruling Congress party since independence in 1947. Gandhi would seem an obvious favorite for India’s youth. He is 42, has involved himself in Congress’s youth wing for much of his political career and says he want to include young people in the political process. Saathee.com
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April 2014