How to Win an Indian Election by Singh Shivam Shankar

Author:Singh, Shivam Shankar [Singh, Shivam Shankar]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789353054731
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2019-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

Political Patrons

Rising up the ranks in a political party often requires the patronage of leaders close to the supremo or people lower in the hierarchy who are close to them. It was only through the patronage of other senior politicians that most people have made it big in politics today; and every major leader will point to a mentor. Without such support, it might just be impossible to succeed in the field.

The story of former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav illustrates this. He was taken on as a mentee by Nathu Singh, the then MLA of Jaswantnagar, an Uttar Pradesh assembly constituency, who was impressed with Yadav after watching him wrestle in an akhara. Nathu Singh later proposed Yadav’s name to contest the election in 1967, giving up his own seat so the young teacher could contest. 1 Thereafter, Yadav went on to count socialist stalwarts Ram Manohar Lohia and Raj Narain as his political mentors. 2 Modi, too, received the support of not only the RSS but also of senior BJP leader Advani during a crisis that could have easily ended his political career. After his failure in controlling the Gujarat riots and reports of his complicity in the matter, the then prime minister, Vajpayee, reportedly wanted to ask Modi to step down from the chief minister’s position. Insider accounts suggest that it was only because Advani strongly argued his case that he was retained. 3

It is no wonder, then, that people at the very top of a political party are recipients of a lot of sycophancy from those who inhabit lower rungs. They not only control people’s entry into politics but also all posts in a party. It is only at their pleasure that the leaders below them get to serve on any post within the government or the party, or even get votes during elections. There are only a handful of politicians who can win an election from their constituencies as independent candidates, and there are very few who can win no matter which party they contest from. Regardless of what estimation most MLAs and MPs give about their own strength in their region, they usually know that they won’t win if they don’t get the ticket to contest from the right party.

The 2014 Lok Sabha elections and most elections since then are prime examples of how valuable a party’s ticket is. Many of the people who won from the BJP during these elections had little or no local support or name recognition. They are MPs and MLAs today only because the BJP gave them a ticket to contest. The voters voted for the party to help Modi win. The local candidate’s identity was of little significance particularly during these elections. 4 I observed this phenomenon first-hand during the 2018 Tripura assembly elections, when people outright stated that our candidate wasn’t the best but they would still vote for the BJP so that a new party could form the government in the state that had only seen CPI(M) rule for the last twenty-five years.

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