Politics without policy

Election campaigns should feature more policy discussion

To a certain extent, the major word of this election is "governance". The Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP's) prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, is standing on his record as chief minister of Gujarat, and on his promise to get administration in New Delhi moving again; to a large degree, Mr Modi's claims about Gujarat have set the national agenda. It is certainly essential to judge the available political options in terms of administrative competence. But it is also important to note that "governance" is not "policy". Elections should also - in fact primarily - be about alternative policy directions, allowing individual voters to choose not just who implements policy, but what their preferred policy prescriptions are. The absence of policy debates in India's democracy means that legislation is seen as being largely removed from the people. This often results in the preponderance of judging the executive functions of a parliamentarian, and not her legislative preferences.

This is not a new phenomenon. Largely, elections have been fought in India without extensive policy debates. Perhaps 1996, in which economic reforms were an issue, is an exception. But, otherwise, elections are devoid of policy confrontations - or, at best, they have a limited, even insignificant, impact. True, manifesto season is fast approaching, and policy promises will be central to most parties' manifestos. But promises are not debates. Then there are allegations levelled by one party at another - for example, by Arvind Kejriwal against the BJP and the ruling Congress over gas prices - but again, these are framed as questions of faulty or corrupt executive decisions, not really explicit debate over the relevant policies.

This lack of policy discussion is particularly odd, given that several major policy disagreements have played out politically in the recent past. The BJP and the Congress have disagreed on, for example, foreign ownership in the insurance sector. This is something that affects a large number of people. Yet the political discussion on this has been absent. Land acquisition has been a politically contentious issue in the past. And yet, in this election, there is no attempt being made to take the questions to the people. Do they prefer one kind of compensation or another? Does a ban on fertile land being used for industrialisation have widespread support? These are questions that should not be settled in New Delhi without being raised in the heat and dust of an election campaign. As long as Indian politics' reluctance to discuss such disagreements continues, policy will be seen as being imposed from above - seen, in fact, as being essentially undemocratic. This is a weakness of India's democracy, and it will cripple the reform process going forward.