The Bihar election 2020 was fought
primarily on Job narrative. Both the coalition were promising the creation of ‘millions’
of jobs and were blaming each other for not able to create enough jobs for the
youths. Earlier agendas like Bijli/Sadak/Paani/ Inflation/law and order issues
were conspicuously absent. So, what is the larger lesson to learn? Let us see.
For human beings, there is no full stop to aspirations. Our aspirations are like a Hedonistic treadmill in which once got fulfilled, we end up in pursuing the next higher. Hence, for most of us, life is mostly about the catching up with the next level of ambition and we are very unlikely to remain happy with our present status for long.
Similar can be said about society
as well. It can be well explained in the framework of the Hierarchy of Needs, as
enunciated by Abhram Maslow.
The primary need of society is the physical safety and security of its individual members and the state should, therefore, be able
to exercise its monopoly over violence. In other words, nobody would like to
live in a Hobession state wherein anarchy prevails and people distrust
each other as it was during the Lalu era in the 1990s. Fed up with it, people voted out Lalu in 2005 and then started Nitish’s era.
In the Post Lalu era, Nitish could somehow put an end to
Lalu sponsored the Hobbesian state of affairs and could re-establish the
authority of the State. People started feeling safe and secure and could venture out of their
homes at night and could do business without fearing their children being
kidnapped. Therefore, the Safety Needs of the people got more or less fulfilled.
In the next level, people wanted to
have Bijli-Sadak in their homes and villages.
To a large extent, Nitish could fulfill this need of the electorate as
well. This can be equated with the Physiological needs’ of Maslow s
pyramid.
Aspirations, once fulfilled, are
taken for granted and are thus become a new normal. Having more or less satisfied with
the physical security needs and sadk/bijli issues, people are asking ‘what next’?
As a next step, people want to fulfill their ‘Esteem needs’. People need a
dignified and meaningful life and don’t want to lead a wretched life. The
first requirement of the Esteem need is that they need to have a reliable source of income through gainful employment.
Having crossed the safety and
physiological needs, voters are now looking towards leaders who can fulfill their
next level of aspiration, ie, Esteem needs, through Jobs. Now, who is promising this
stuff to the electorate? The son of a leader who was primarily believed to be the
key architect of Jungle raj.
Tejaswi Yadav was more coherent in
his ideas; He understood that after fulfilling the first two needs, what people
now need is Jobs and the sense of dignity that is coming along with it. Hence he promised
to provide 10 lakh jobs in Government services. For an ordinary Bihari, a
secure and stable Government job is the best available thing for life. Naturally, many fell in love with that idea of a government job.
But things were not that simple.
The big question was the credibility of that promise and the untrustworthiness
of the person who happened to identify with an old regime. Hence not all were enthusiastic about the ‘promise of jobs’ and many
wished to continue with the status quo rather than opting for uncertainty under
a non-tested leader.
Nitish Kumar sincerely believed that
people will reward him handsomely because he is credited with ending the Jungle
raj and built new roads and provided electricity. However, what he forgot was
that people shall not be grateful to him forever. You delivered the promise and
you got the reward in the next election cycle. To win another election, you
need to fulfill a different set of promises. In other words, a fulfilled
promise/ aspiration is a cheque which can be en-cashed only once.
It’s a lesson for all politicians.
Your promise should be on those unfulfilled aspirations that voters actually
aspire for. It may not be the physical needs always. Self Esteem needs are the
one that comes up once we fulfilled the physical needs. However, Self Esteems
needs are not just about Jobs alone.
Empowerment of a particular community (ies) which may be
underprivileged, underrepresented, or having specific grievances vis a vis another competing community is also an ‘Esteem Need’. What we often dismiss as
‘communal /casteist agenda’ are these specific psychological needs of a section
of the population who are angry at the present state of affairs. An astute politician
will be able to identify such needs and if articulated and communicated
properly, will be able to reap a substantial amount of electoral dividend.
But the issue is far more complex.
The needs and aspirations of the targeted electorate will be usually lying at
different levels of the ‘hierarchy of needs’. Hence parties usually don’t make a
single promise, but a basket of promises, each targeted to different sections
of the society and individuals whose different kinds of aspirations they are
promising to fulfill. The one leader who makes such a rainbow of promises will win
the day.
Politics and electoral completion is an arena
where leaders are trying to outsmart each other for fulfilling and promising to
fulfill an unmet and hierarchal nature of aspirations of a society or a part of
it. The winner in this game will be the one who creates a basket of promises
and a rainbow of a coalition with which he can gain more support than that of his
rivals. However, the actual skill of a leader lies in identifying and articulating
the needs and aspirations and thereby stitching together this support base into
an electoral arena.
