Lok Sabha Elections 2014: Increase in voter turnout and other factors

          Increase in voter turn out:

Let us first look at the poll numbers of previous Lok Sabha Elections namely 2009 and 2004. The data is as below.

2009 electors 71.7 crore. Voted 41.7 cr  Congress : 11.90 cr, BJP : 7.80 cr. 

2004 electors 67.1 crore  Voted 38.9 cr  Congress : 10.34 cr, BJP : 8.63 cr

The 2014 Scenario 

Given past trends it is safe to assume that electors increase at 1% p .a  to say 75 crores. Given increasing voter turnout in all elections in the past two years and the nature of the high profile election battle ahead, a voter turnout of 70% seems the most likely outcome. If the economic situation deteriorates further and there are social tensions then the voter turnout could be even higher  - perhaps even 75% ! Let us consider both cases.

Case 1 : Voter turnout  at say 70%  means 52.5 crore will cast their vote.  Additional voters over 209 will be about 11 crore voters

Case 2 Voter turnout at  75%  means that 56.25 crores  will caste their vote. Additional voters over 209 will be about 14.75 crore voters

Whom  are these additional voters of 11-14,75 crore  going to vote  for  ?

         Important factors  likely to play a big role  in Elections 2014: 

1. Muslim bloc vote may matter less and less : Muslim vote is a maxed out credit card ie it cannot be increased any further. Its size and importance can only shrink as a % of the votebase.  A large portion of Muslims usually vote. Muslims until now have tended to vote  as a bloc but this is also changing. There are Muslim parties coming up who want to represent themselves. There is a greater fight for the Muslim vote with parties who claim to be more Secular than each other. They may not ally with Congress due to mistreatment of allies ex: Samajwadi Dal, Trinamool Congress, DMK etc.  Also as witnessed in the 2013 Gujarat state elections some muslims are now voting for governance - some surveys put 30%+ of the Muslim vote for BJP in this election. This may negate the effect of the Muslim bloc vote too !

2. Increasing value of Non-muslim vote: Muslim vote is 20% of electorate. In 2009 election 60% voted. So if large portion of muslims voted say 90%, then 30% of vote was muslim.  This also aithmetically means that only 42 of 80 non-muslims voted giving a voter turnout of only 52.5% for non-muslims. There has been substantial increase in voting in all elections in last 2-3 years namely West Bengal,  Tamilnadu, Gujarat, etc. This is likely in Lok Sabha elections of 2014 also. So the increase is likely to be in non-muslim vote, non-caste based voters and pro-governance voters (given the nature of our politics the others are already voting anyway) and  hitherto apathetic voter now wanting to participate in the electoral process.

3. Relations of Congress with allies is at an all time low: For the Congress, going with allies has its own problems- lack of credibility and image issues, going alone has its own problems - numbers wont add up at all  and secular vote will get divided. The 2009  election  saw the best electoral  leverage for alliances for Congress. In 2014 allying with allies like NCP or DMK can be be very costly for Congress.   

What will all this mean for the Lok Sabha Elections 2014 ? Will the old formulas of working out vote bank politics work as effectively as it has done in the past ?

Corruption : Tat vam asi

Over the past few years, there has been an uproar over rising corruption levels in India. It is undoubtedly an evil that is crippling our society. However in its current state, there is also a divine blessing hidden in it.

If any of our leaders could see it and use it wisely,  a lot can be done using the same "evil" and it will turn into a very constructive force for change. Let me elaborate.

As a result of corruption at various levels, citizens pay a high price either through bribes or wasted time and resources for accomplishing any work related to or in concert with a government department or agency. These costs are now routinely factored into daily life- for example the costing of a vada pao on a roadside platform now includes the cost of hafta for the beat cop.

As corruption has increased, these costs have also increased so much so that everyone knows they are paying a hefty price for everything and is accustomed to doing so.  Many times this fee is 10 times or an even higher  multiple of the official fee. Since the citizens are used to paying high prices, the government needs to  officially introduce high prices services for quick service at the same price as it is done unofficially by creating a tatkaal option for as many government services as possible. Simultaneously the government should offer same services at a lower price albeit at a slower speed also so that poorer citizens also are served properly and benefit from the system. The poorer citizens still benefit as the abuses from "discretionary powers" and inefficiency from poor workflow management are eliminated thereby vastly improving service delivery.

Before doing this, the government should implement technology platforms for these services so that all these services will be speeded up, the abuse of powers curbed by creating a clear  workflow  that can be tracked online in real-time  and monitored. The productivity of the government employees will also go up and more private organizations could be inducted into service delivery thus saving the government from taking on permanently tenured employees.  In this way, the government would only need to hire higher senior level officers and could offer much better compensation to attract a better quality staff into government at senior levels  Over time, this will also eliminate one of the problems of the government namely too many overpaid low level employees who never want to leave their jobs and underpaid senior level employees with skills who tend to leave their jobs for greener pastures.

The higher revenues gathered from the official tatkaal services will pay back all investments made into the technology platform very quickly and will also help government offer much better services to poorer citizens at a lower cost.

The Passport Seva Kendra which recently celebrated the issuance of the 1 crore passport is an example. One key success factor is that these technology enabled service delivery reduces the "discretionary powers" of most of the Government officers and thereby speeds up delivery.  It also substantially reduces cost of delivery as there are very few tenured government officers, very few peons/clarks hired for this process. Due to outsourcing of the project, bulk of the services purchased for delivery of the services are actually sourced by TCS the vendor for passport seva kendra thereby eliminating corruption in managing the facility, recruitment, overheads etc.

Once the technology investments are made, there should be a gradual reduction of the price of these services so that they are in line with the real costs. This way the evil of corruption can be milked for all it worth to build a good system.

The following services could be easily added to tatkaal.
1. Building plan permissions
2. Property registrations


One of the great strengths of our society has been the ability to recognize the divinity in everything around us. The mahavakya Tat vam asi illustrates this aspect of our society.

Can we recognize the "Tat vam asi"  prevalent in corruption in every aspect of our society and build government services delivery using that ?

If w  could do it, we would  turn our worst curse into our greatest blessing.

What do you expect from the next Prime Minister of India ? Part 1

A recent post on Facebook asked this question.

I wondered what can a practical person do which will lead to results within 3-5 years. Here is a list of all the low handing fruit issues which  could be implemented easily. Many have already been implemented at state level by some governments and hence there is no excuse to not bring about these changes.

1. 24X 7 power in at least 70% of the nation

The issues with electricity shortage are currently four-fold namely
a. shortage of coal and gas  leading to shortfall in generation especially considering that considerable investment has already gone into power generation and these assets are lying idle.
b. losses due to poor distribution a distribution networks are geared to deliver power for one light bulb but is actually used to run televisions, washing machines and all other housing.
c. due to electricity theft and
d. wastage/mis-use of power delivered due to agricultural connections.

All of them have solutions which have been tested and can be easily executed. This would empower a large part of India to find solutions to their economic problems and would be the better economic stimulus for the country than sops such as subsidized food, rural employment guarantee.

This would also immediately stop migration to bigger cities.

2. Fix the leakage in Public sector undertakings (PSUs): This requires no great effort. All it takes is to appoint competent and honest managers. If they are in short supply, give more than one duty to the honest ones and keep the dishonest ones without any work.  It is cheaper to pay dishonest ones their salary than have then damage the finances of the country.

The main targets should be to turn around Air India, BSNL and Postal Department. These can save at least Rs 25,000-30,000 crores per annum of assistance being made to these companies currently.

3.  Substantial increase railways capacity substantially and modernization of Railways

Today if there is one good/service which sells at a black market premium - it is railway tickets. Clearly there is demand for much more passenger services.  This should be taken up immediately. Investment in railways will boost the economy as there will be greater movement of people and it will lead to economic growth.

Simultaneously the railways should be modernized to improve speeds and reduce accident risks. The railways has enormous land banks. Railways have very high footfalls next only to temples. This should  be used constructively to make multi-use real estate  which will boost cash flow for the railways and also make railways stations hubs of activity for people.

4. Remove discretion given to Revenue Department Officers

Recently our retired Supreme Court Chief Justice Kapadia observed that in many cases the law is vague and includes law equivalent of saying that one "should drive with care". He said there is no clear definition of what amount to driving with care. He said this allows great latitude to revenue officers to interpret the way they want. This allows for mi-use of laws for personal benefit.

Clear laws are required which unequivocally state the law and its clear interpretation in a definitive manner. This will let officers implement law rather than spend time interpreting it. This will also prevent unscrupulous assesses from bending the law to their advantage by corrupting Revenue Department officers.

5. Transport and energy use reform

We do not have the oil that we are consuming.  The powers that have the oil are states hostile to a non-violent Hindu  majority state that we are. If we want to continue to consume oil in the current fashion we should have a massive change in our geo-political strategy and become like the USA. This is very unlikely. I doubt if our society will give license to our leaders to invade other countries, assassinate their leaders etc  merely to secure more and more oil for our consumption

Hence the only option left is to substantially reduce the Energy consumption  to GDP ratio. We need to create disincentives for  private vehicle ownership and increase use of public transport.

 6. Reduction of fiscal deficit

a. We are having many problems like over-use of fertilizers and large subsidies for fertilizers. No one is gaining from these problems. These need holistic solutions such as using bio-waste of cities converted to bio-manure. This will solve the cities problems of waste disposal as well as the farmers problems of fertilizers.

b. Use of Private-Public partnerships for providing Government services

We need  to cap the employment in the government.  We need to use technology for our country's administration - it is not enough if do great work for the whole world while but dont solve our own problems. We need to create large scale roll out of private-public partnerships. We already have many examples: Example: Infosys in income tax returns processing, TCS in passport seva kendras. We need to find more areas where delivery of government services is sub-standard and bring under this kind of arrangements.  We need to try experiments and also take already successful innovation across the country in areas such as government schools, bus transportation among others.


All of these are actually easy to do but if they are implemented our country will look very different. Is this asking for too much ?