Holding Sway Through Popular Appeal: A Case Study of India’s Elections

As teachers many questions of varied hues and nature are often faced. The toughest ones are about electorate behavior. Why do constituent members time and time again elect individuals who have scant caliber to govern yet win elections on the merit of their speech which most know to be empty promises made to make best use of the situation? Ironically, the empty words do wonders for the political trajectory of the said candidates helping them waltz their way to victory. It has happened in many countries across the globe. Evo Morales in Bolivia, Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, Donald Trump in the US, and Nigel Farage almost winning in Britain. Back in India, Narendra Modi recorded a massive victory trouncing the Congress party in a never-before-experienced political contest in 2014 and then again in 2019. The one common factor that weaves a bridge between all these political leaders is the populist narrative carried forward by them. The toxic nature of Trump’s campaign speeches in 2016 is a testimony to the malice and vitriol that were spewed in the name of opposition bashing. The adage “All is fair in love & war” has been tweaked mightily to accommodate multitudes of political transgressions till date, more so in recent years. Strangely, this phenomenon is not new. History is proof that political leaders and aspirants have never hesitated to use rhetoric that have had a powerful impact on peoples’ perception of the world around, taken in by the cleverly manipulated data that are merely a colored version of the existing facts.