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ABSTRACT
Do perceptions of insecurity from politically motivated violence affect the decision of poor voters to re-elect incumbents in Indian elections? This article examines this question in the empirical context of the Maoist-affected Junglemahal region in the state of West Bengal in eastern India. Exploiting original survey data collected in 38 Maoist-affected villages in Junglemahal prior to the 2019 Lok Sabha election, I show that respondents (a) were able to discriminate between politically motivated violence and other governance-related issues, (b) were more inclined to vote for the incumbent the greater the importance attached to the provision of public goods, but (c) were less inclined to vote for the incumbent the greater the importance attached to politically motivated violence. In auxiliary tests, I find that the effect of the perceived threat from politically motivated violence was mediated by feelings of fear, anger, and worry about the general direction in which the state was going. I also present evidence showing a positive relationship between the level of campaign contact by the opposition party and the level of negative emotions experienced by voters.
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This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1 A regional party that split off from the Indian National Congress. For an analysis of the fragmentation of the Congress ‘system,’ see Hardgrave and Kochanek (Citation1999, 252–286).
2 The parties that constitute the Left Front are the Communist of Party of India (Marxist), the Communist Party of India, the Revolutionary Socialist Party, the All India Forward Bloc, and several smaller parties.
3 To put these numbers into perspective, the adjoining state of Jharkhand experienced over 500 insurgency-related fatalities over the same period (SATP Citation2015).
4 For an analysis of the deeper historical roots of the Maoist conflict across India, see Mukherjee (Citation2018).
5 Mahato’s body was found hanging from a tree on 30 May (Das Citation2018a). Kumar’s body was found hanging from a high voltage electric tower on 2 June (Das Citation2018b).
6 Das (Citation2018a).
7 In the state as a whole, the BJP wrested an unprecedented 45% of parliamentary seats and 40% of votes cast. Although the party performed less well in the recently concluded 2021 Vidhan Sabha election where the TMC received a strong majority, it performed markedly better in Junglemahal relative to elsewhere in the state, winning in 14 out of the 40 Vidhan Sabha constituencies under the Lok Sabha constituencies in the region.
8 This is in sharp contrast to the positional voting models, which assume that regardless of the issue at hand, voters are able to assess how far off their personal policy preferences are from party policy preferences, and make their choices accordingly.
9 The necessary ethics approval for the research reported in this study was taken from the National University of Singapore Institutional Review Board (NUS-IRB reference code no: A-16-045). A request to obtain oral informed consent in lieu of documentation of informed consent was granted by the Board. Given the state of literacy in Junglemahal, some respondents would have been uncomfortable signing a document they did not fully understand, thus adversely impacting trust between enumerators and participants.
10 The surveyed villages were identified using the South Asian Terrorism Portal’s database on Maoist-related incidents in West Bengal between 2005 and 2015. They were selected using the criterion that at least one Maoist-related incident was reported from the village in the database.
11 This refers to a small savings scheme scam that implicated many TMC party members.
12 A controversial policy proposed by the central government to delimit citizenship.
13 This refers to a central government policy adding new groups to the constitutional category of ‘scheduled tribes.’
14 The results of the robustness checks using the local security perception index are consistent with the core findings. These are available from the author upon request.
15 The results of the robustness checks using the positive emotions index are consistent with the core findings. These are available from the author upon request.
16 The literature on economic voting is voluminous. For a recent assessment of this literature, see Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier (Citation2019). My predictions are informed by a study by Ray and Varughese (Citation2021), which argues that voters in sub-national pro-poor contexts, such as West Bengal and Kerala, will use the national election as a referendum on both the sub-national and national incumbent, holding the former responsible for changes in household economic conditions and the latter responsible for changes in national economic conditions.
17 The results of the robustness checks using the negative policy evaluation index are consistent with the core findings. These are available from the author upon request.
18 Unless indicated otherwise, all models reported in the paper are estimated using standard errors corrected for clustering at the village level.
19 The sensitivity tests for Model 3b have similar interpretations. These results are available from the author upon request.
20 Jaffrelot (Citation2015).
21 Village-level population data for modeling selection effects was taken from https://villageinfo.in/west-bengal.html.
22 The results from the models with direct effects have similar interpretations and are available from the author upon request.
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Subhasish Ray
Subhasish Ray is a Professor at the Jindal School of Government and Public Policy at O.P. Jindal Global University. He also serves as an Editor of the Journal of Genocide Research. His most current line of research examines how a legacy of civil conflict shapes elections, public opinion, and voting.