Voters must compare performance against promise and look back at pandemic management

When it comes to elections and support for a political party, do many of us stop to think rationally and critically? This is not against or for any political party. It is about critical thinking in the political context.

A lot of people find it difficult to grapple with the concept of critical thinking. Actually, it is the word 'thinking' in the phrase that makes people feel daunted. We don't like to think, some of us love to outsource our thinking to political leaders and believe that they will think for us. The reality is that most of them will only think for themselves.

Bur as citizens, we must think for ourselves and think critically about who to choose for the next five years to govern the state or the country. Critical thinking becomes even more important because our lives and livelihoods will be impacted by politics and political leaders.

As most political parties in the contest of the coming elections in five states have been in government for quite some time, we need to examine with reliable data their performance vs. their promise. It is or should be a very simple exercise to test out the parties’ real capabilities against their claims.

ECONOMIC RANKING

Take the economic performance parameters of the country. India was among the top five or six of the fastest growing economies around 2014. Today we are ranked 164th out of 193 countries in the world according to former World Bank economist Dr Kaushik Basu. This does not put the governing political party in a good light at all.

GLOBAL SOFT POWER INDEX

India has fallen nine places in the Global Soft Power Index 2021 due to the COVID-19 impact. India is currently ranked at 36, down from 27 in the 2020 report. "India’s perceived difficulties in tackling the health repercussions and economic impact of the virus outweighed their moderately positive perceptions in the Culture & Heritage pillar," said the report by brand Finance, an independent brand valuation and strategy consultancy.

This too isn't something that helps the ruling party at the Centre which is promising a brighter future. The track record so far is rather abysmal. As the world’s 27th soft power nation and with a Global Soft Power Index Score of 41.6 out of 100, India is leading the charge amongst its South Asian neighbours in the soft power stakes, but clearly under-performs relative to other leading nations, given the size of its population, economy, and its rich heritage.

Critical thinking would also require us to examine the current performance in the context of the future potential. Almost every survey suggests that India would rank among the top five global economies by 2030.

One will have to assess the likelihood of this happening by looking at how smart the policymakers are, the growth potential of the private enterprises, the performance of the service sector which is almost half the economy today and the availability of talent which is a critical factor in a knowledge economy.

In the immediate term, this growth momentum will depend on how efficiently the country tackles the virus. So far, government data shows that the country has done fairly well on this score. On the flip side, new strains could become a major roadblock to fulfilling the economic promise. Already certain states are going for another round of lockdowns. And the experience of people in the five states need to be taken into account.

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX

On several other parameters and ranking India seems to have slipped. Out of 189 countries, India has ranked 131 on the Human Development Index 2020 prepared by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). India slipped two places to 53rd position in the 2020 Democracy Index's global ranking, according to The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), which said the "democratic backsliding" by authorities and "crackdowns" on civil liberties has led to a further decline in the country's ranking. Similar reports from think tanks in the US and Sweden have come up with equally bleak reports and ranks. India is ‘partly free’, said Freedom House.

ARE WE POORER THAN EVER?

The biggest challenge before India is that over 90% of the population still live on less than $5 a day. Growth in GDP will be meaningless unless millions of Indians are lifted out of poverty. UNDP, which had reported that India succeeded in lifting 271 million people out of poverty between 2006 and 2016, estimated that 260 million people would be back in poverty by 2020 - almost as many as the 271 million who left between 2006 and 2016. These 260 million people come from approximately 20% of Indians who were just above the 28% considered poor.

This setback poses considerable challenges for the country in terms of malnutrition, especially in the least developed states such as Uttar Pradesh (where 23% of migrant workers came from), Bihar (where remittances from these workers represented 35% of the state's gross domestic product in 2019), Madhya Pradesh, (where 36% of the inhabitants live below the poverty line) etc.

Citizens have to think critically whether politicians responsible for delivering governance have the vision to achieve this difficult goal, or are they more concerned about non-issues like religion, our choice of clothes and food.

The worrying signal for me at least is that budgetary allocation for education is declining. It shows that we perhaps need to refocus on things that will create a more democratic, educated, inclusive, tolerant, liberal country.

Citizens when casting their votes will have to keep this in mind.

(The writer is a communications specialist based in Kolkata. Views are personal)