No post-poll analysis is complete without repeated references to the anti-incumbency factor, which is generally understood as the overall apathy of the voters towards the government in power. This apathy or disenchantment caused over a period of time has an individual and social dimension. It is an accumulation of individual experiences of frustration and disappointment of the citizens accrued at their points of interface with the government.
Often it is not the immediate response to a single incident, but the outcome of a series of experiences. At some point, these individual experiences of belied expectations get blended in the collective subconscious mind of the society as a shared narrative. The media converts individual experiences from stand-alone and isolated instances into a mega narrative. Thus with the help of the media, the image of a government gets validated with the experiential truth of the citizens. In this alchemy, perception and experience coalesce to create an assessment.
These individual assessments, without any conscious mechanism or external manipulation, crystallise into a sense of disenchantment and find expression as anti-incumbency factor during an election. Democracy bestows this great opportunity and power to the citizen on polling day to ventilate pent-up disappointment in the freedom and privacy of the booth.
However, individual experiences are not the sole factor affecting the voter. The impressions arising out of the allegations, instances of nepotism and corruption also contribute to the formation of an overall image. It is but natural in a democracy for the opposition parties to find fault with the government and the party in power. That is how democracy redeems itself from unacceptable aggregation of power and ensures accountability. All the allegations may not be true, yet the government has to necessarily answer the allegations and clear the doubts created. Invariably governments muster substantial energy to refute the allegations with facts and figures and counter-allegations. Most of the time governments go into damage-control mode realising that the allegations could damage their electoral prospects.
What is often forgotten is that the influence of these major allegations on the voter is not as compelling and decisive as the individual experiences of corruption and apathy in government offices. Of course, in conjunction with the voter’s experiential truth, the allegations and the general atmosphere of suspicion play a contributory role in deciding whether or not to vote for the ruling party again. The government’s defence of the allegations alone, without recognising the value of administrative insolence and abject indifference, particularly towards the poor and powerless, often fails to achieve any worthwhile result. Admittedly, governments cannot afford to ignore the major allegations but it is seldom realised that ignoring the groundswell of disenchantment due to official inertia, arrogance and greed is equally or more costly.
So the anti-incumbency factor is nothing but the cumulative outcome of the government’s neglect or failure of governance and its underestimation of the damage caused by bureaucratic indifference, audacity and ubiquitous corruption. Ministers becoming the greatest protectors of their departments is a common phenomenon. Any criticism about the working of their department instantly brings out their defence reflexes and the ministers go all out to defend the employees and officers, except when the allegations and irregularities are very grave.
This defence and dismissing the allegations as baseless is ostensibly to guard the overall image of the government. This ostrich-like denial gets translated into complacency among government employees over a period of time. Opportunities to correct and overhaul are more often than not wasted by the compulsion for political defence. As a result, employees at the cutting edge and officers at other levels have no inducement to change their attitudes. All the entrenched and unholy practices thus continue government after government. Apathy thus becomes a self-repeating loop.
With some attention to detail and a political will to view the implementation of programmes from the point of view of citizens, governance can be made far more effective and accountable. Employees’ organisations with ideological affinity with the government in power have the chance and potential to be the most effective change agents. The experience however is to the contrary. They often use their political clout to shield the guilty and convey the message that to be an ideological co-traveller is more important than being efficient, upright and accountable.
That corruption is a great bonding factor is often not properly appreciated. In field-level offices, where the scope for making extra money is high, political differences melt away in the orgy of sharing the booty. If only the opposing unions were vigilant enough to expose graft. The fact however is that rival unions might compete on several issues but not on a matter as crucial as quality of governance or zero tolerance to graft.
The anti-incumbency factor is the outcome of continuous neglect of the citizens and their right for timely services. The insulation against the gradual growth of anti-incumbency sentiment should begin from day one of any government. A government guided by the recognition and credo that citizens’ rights are supreme and the privileges of bureaucracy and political elite are indeed secondary has greater chances of preventing the formation of the lethal anti-incumbency sentiment.
K Jayakumar
Former Chief Secretary to Government of Kerala and former Vice Chancellor of Malayalam University
Email: k.jayakumar123@gmail.com