Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Prannoy Roy about Indian elections' that was published in Newsband

Prannoy Roy about Indian elections

Veteran journalist and psephologist Prannoy Roy recently co-authored a book, ‘The Verdict: Decoding India’s Elections’, with Dorab R. Sopariwala. Roy talks about opinion polls, landslide victories and the problem of missing women voters in India. Here are some excerpts:

Many journalists tend to try to forecast the elections, which is not their job, especially considering the fact that ours is a first-past-the-post system where a small percentage change in votes will have a huge change in seats — a 3% change in votes could mean a 100 seats changing hands. For a journalist, it will be difficult to have a gut feel for 3%.

Pollsters tend to try to play it safe. It is important for them to get the winner right rather than the seats. They predict, so-and-so is the largest party, but they try to project seats that are a standard deviation lower.

As for the respondents, there is a huge exaggeration about who they voted for the last time. This is a phenomenon the world over. So, I don’t think there is any technique to estimate this fear factor. However, we are trying to use Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning to understand this behaviour.

We don’t have a fully national election any more, which used to be the phenomenon in the 1950s when we were newly independent and people trusted their politicians and leaders. The Lok Sabha elections are a federation of State elections. And invariably in Lok Sabha elections, each State votes differently and the final result in an election is the combination of ‘landslides’ and results at the State level that could counteract each other.

The turnout management plays a very important role in winning elections. We have seen that lower turnouts tend to help cadre-based parties like the BJP because they make sure their voters turn out. Non-cadre parties hope that voluntarily people turn out. The committed voter is expected to turn out more in lower turnout elections.

Women are coming out to vote more than men in every State, and more so in the south of India, of course, where the women are much more proactive.

The percentage of women candidates the parties have nominated has been appallingly low - nowhere near the 50% that they deserve. But because of this increasing turnout of women overtaking men, now the policies of parties are becoming women-focused.

Village women turnout is the highest in any category in this country and it is growing the fastest. And it used to be more than 20% behind men. Now, rural women voters turn out at a higher percentage than urban voters in towns, and certainly above men as well.

Now, the role of money in elections. This is an area where it is unfair to blame the Election Commission. They are completely helpless. Because there is political finance that operates outside the system of electoral funding. You already have these resources. Political parties collect money in various ways. And now you have new, innovative ways that are less transparent. Electoral bonds, which make an ass of the law.