The Politics of Social Welfare: The BJP and the Discerning Voter
| Published date | 01 December 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/23210230241291220 |
| Author | K. K. Kailash |
| Date | 01 December 2024 |
The Politics of Social Welfare:
The BJP and the Discerning Voter
K. K. Kailash1
Abstract
Voting studies tell us that voters reward incumbents who take care of the economic self-interest of
voters. However, is the relationship between services and votes simple and straightforward? Are there
conditions when welfare provisioning does not convert into votes for the incumbent? Data from the
National Election Studies 2024 appears to suggest that voters are discerning and concerned about
access issues when it comes to welfare delivery. Voters do not cast their votes only on whether they
received private (welfare) benefits but also consider factors such as their experience and well-being
while accessing those goods and services. Examining the relationship between welfare services and vot-
ing, the article demonstrates that individual-level processes are politically significant enough to influence
vote choices between the benefits and the votes. These findings could inform scholarly studies and
policy debates on social service delivery and vote choice.
Keywords
India, pocketbook voting, welfare, Lok Sabha elections, Votes, Bharatiya Janata Party, access
Comparative studies show that if incumbent governments take care of the voters’ economic self-interest
and make them better off, the ruling parties will be rewarded electorally. Parties are, therefore, incentivized
to run programmes with particularistic benefits that impact people’s livelihoods, finances, bank accounts,
and so on to influence voter preferences and enhance their re-election prospects. While this is seemingly
straightforward, it also raises new questions. Will voters express support only because they benefit from
a policy, or is there something more?
Let us go back two decades in time to understand the role of welfare protection in voting choices. After
the electoral results of 2004, it was realized that there was a huge gap between the growth buzz about India
often heard in international forums and the demands of the poorer and socially economically marginalized
sections of society. ‘India shining’, as Sharma (2019) notes, ‘concealed deep wells of discontent’, including
agrarian distress, rural disenchantment, and unemployment. Notwithstanding the fact there could be many
factors that would have influenced the election outcome, the perception that questions of state responsibility
Original Article
Studies in Indian Politics
12(2) 228–250, 2024
© 2024 Lokniti, Centre for the
Study of Developing Societies
Article reuse guidelines:
in.sagepub.com/journals-permissions-india
DOI: 10.1177/23210230241291220
journals.sagepub.com/home/inp
1 Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, Telangana, India
Corresponding author:
K. K. Kailash, Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, Telangana 500046, India.
E-mail: kailashkk@uohyd.ac.in
Kailash 229
and abdication and feelings of exclusion played a definitive role in shaping the policy agenda of the
subsequent United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government (Hasan, 2006).
A closer examination of the 2004 election results also highlighted a sharp divide in the social bases of
political parties. The Congress was the ‘party of the underdog’ representing the marginalized sections
vis-à-vis the BJP, which got more votes from the wealthier and better-off sections (Yadav, 2004). The
UPA, led by the Congress, not surprisingly, prioritized redistribution over growth and inaugurated what
later came to be called a ‘new rights agenda’ (Ruperalia, 2013). While economic reforms continued, the
sustained high growth gave the government adequate fiscal space, allowing for greater welfare
provisioning. Subsequently, welfare services became an integral element of political mobilization and
competition.
The scholarship on the politics of welfare in India has worked on two dimensions in the post-economic
reforms era. One set of studies has focussed primarily on the programmatic elements, including design,
implementation, prioritization, delivery, and welfare service outcomes, as well as variables that
potentially influence welfare services, including state capacity, leadership, bureaucracy, and sub-national
and party regime variation among others (e.g., Chhotray et al., 2020; Deshpande et al., 2017; Drèze &
Khera, 2017; Khera, 2011b; Rahman & Pingali, 2024; Tillin et al., 2015). These studies revolved around
questions of who gives what, when, and how and do not directly address whether policy elements
impinge on vote choices.
The other set of studies examines the influence of welfare policies on two related elements, including
credit attribution and voting behaviour. Most studies have noted that in a federation when policy
formulation and execution are diffused across various levels, credit attribution becomes slightly complex
(Deshpande et al., 2019; Gupta et al., 2022; Ray & Varughese, 2021; Tillin, 2022). On the issue of vote
choices, questions of whether there was a difference between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries (Attri
& Choudhary, 2022, p. 150), whether particular programmes had greater leverage than others (Mishra &
Attri, 2019) and issues of competitive welfarism (Aiyar, 2019) and welfare spending (Chandrasekhar &
Ghosh, 2014) among others have received attention.
The success of the UPA in 2009 was attributed among other things to a series of ‘pro-people legislative
and policy initiatives’ including the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act among others (Yadav &
Palshikar, 2009). Like the UPA, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has also ridden the welfare horse. In
2019, ‘Ujjwala’, a programme that attempts to provide clean cooking fuel to deprived households, was
underlined as a major factor in the victory of the BJP (Attri & Jain, 2019). However, in 2024, despite the
hype and hoopla on welfare services and delivery, the BJP could not hold on to its previous vote share,
much less add to it. Why has welfare provisioning not translated into votes?
While both sets of studies have bridged the gap between politics and public policy in India, they do
not necessarily talk to each other. Drawing from the programmatic elements’ literature, this article brings
to the forefront the experience of accessing welfare and examines if it matters for vote choices. Voters
probably do not cast their votes only on whether they received welfare benefits but also consider factors
such as their experience and well-being while accessing welfare. This article argues that between the
welfare benefits and the votes, there are individual-level processes which are politically significant
enough to influence vote choices. By bringing together both strands of literature on the politics of welfare
in India, this article could inform scholarly studies and policy debates on social service delivery and vote
choice.
The article concludes that parties can probably generate goodwill and electoral rewards from welfare
programmes only if there is a positive experience when seeking these services. Experience matters,
especially when people do not have a favourable opinion about their personal finances and circumstances.
In other words, welfare benefits, which are difficult to access, especially when people’s personal
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