Rahul, Obama And The Youth

It is tempting to read the re-election of the UPA with moreseats in the 2009 elections as a mandate for continuity. To many, these resultsappear to be a contrast from the election of the first Black President inAmerica on a historic mandate for change in November 2008. The political dramasenacted in two of the world’s leading theaters of democracy have verydifferent scripts and characters. Despite important differences, there areremarkable parallels in the recent electoral victories in the US and India.Indeed, the outcome of India’s elections may be no less transformational thanthe election of Barack Hussein Obama in America. The story of the resurgence ofthe Democratic Party in America and the Indian National Congress in India shareat least one common refrain. In both countries, the youth seem to have emergedas central to the political discourse and may have unleashed a process ofchurning that can have far reaching consequences.  

The phenomenal success of Barack Obama--popularly called the "obamanomenon"--wasachieved by reaching out to a vast army of young Americans between the ages of18 and 29. Obama’s brilliant campaign strategy was hatched by experts aroundthe University of Chicago, where Obama lived and taught as a professor of Law.His campaign offered numerous cyber tools that enabled volunteers to mobilizelocally. The student President of the University of Chicago Democrats, LeighHartman, told me that young Americans like himself became "A bottomless pit ofresource for the Obama campaign. We were prepared to go to Iowa on our ownmoney, crash on someone’s couch for four nights till we had knocked on eachdoor in a small town at least two times to register new voters and distributecampaign fliers." Sitting two blocks down from Obama’s former office at theUniversity of Chicago Law School, America’s leading expert on race and USpolitics, Professor Michael Dawson, explains that the American youth played adecisive role in organizing and campaigning for Obama. Yet, he says, youngpeople did not drastically influence the absolute numbers of the electoraloutcome.  

In contrast to the US, the youth in India are demographicallysignificant because India is a predominantly young country with more than sixtypercent of its population under the age of 35. Whether youth votes actually ledto the victory of the Congress party remains inconclusive but the power of youngpeople to numerically affect elections can hardly be denied. An unprecedented 43million new voters were registered across India, although we don’t know howmany of them actually voted. Yet, it is plausible that the importance of youngvoters might have played a positive role in the nationwide success of theCongress and its improved vote share. There has been much talk about recentrejuvenation of the Youth Congress and induction of young Congress partymembers. However a large part of the urban youth may have supported the Congressbut they remained largely aloof from the actual process of campaigning unlikeyouth participation in the Obama campaign.  

The increasing importance of the youth in the current discourseabout elections in the US and India is historically significant at two levels.It represents a shift from decades of alienation of young people from thepolitical system in the both countries. Moreover, the recent successes of theCongress Party in India and the Democratic Party in the US reflect a newfound"coolness" acquired by these two political parties. It is a far cry from theresentment faced by these parties in recent history.  

For the past two decades, the Congress had come to symbolize thepolitics of the old guard, dynastic rule and empty symbolism. Meanwhile the BJPbuilt its political career by destroying a mosque and demonising Indian Muslimsas agents of Pakistan. It rose to power on the backs of a politics of hate andviolence that argued for an imagined history of Hindu unity and persecution. Bystrategically shifting the framework of public debate, the BJP pushed to thewall a Congress party viewed as weak and corrupt. Any talk of includingmarginalized castes and religious minorities in India’s mainstream wasattacked by the Sangh Parivar as an anti-Hindu politics of appeasement. As aresult, a defensive Congress had become increasingly apologetic about professingthe very ideals of equal citizenship and secularism enshrined in India’sconstitution.   

In the US, the Republican Party rule since the late 1960s,except for two Clinton terms in the 1990s, cultivated what is known as the"culture wars." It entrenched a divisive cultural politics based on race,religion and immigration in the American political discourse. The post World WarBaby Boom generation who came of age in the 1960s was the architect of thisconservative identity politics. Domestically, Americans incessantly debatedabortion, gay marriage and scientific knowledge production versus Christianity.American foreign policy remained focused on waging ideological wars in Vietnamin the 1960s, in the Gulf in the 1990s and in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001. 

Over the years, notes the American commentator Andrew Sullivan,the Democratic Party internalised the fear that the majority was not with them.A Regan-era legacy of neo-liberalism meant that Democratic programs forinclusive distribution of wealth and public services were attacked as communistagendas. Many of Obama’s young supporters came of age when America’s War onTerror unfolded after the September 11 attacks. This generation felt let down bythe staleness of the old culture wars, America’s disastrous militaryadventures and the economic recession. These frustrations provided a historicwindow of opportunity to reconfigure public debate that had been dominated bydecades of jingoistic right-wing politics. Social welfare policies and the endof the war with the Muslim world were increasingly seen as the only way todeliver America out of this moral and economic morass. Obama stepped in byembracing an inclusive and secular political agenda. According to Sullivan, hewas "among the first Democrats in a generation not to be afraid or ashamed ofwhat they actually believe." Michael Dawson notes it is not that the Americanyouth have become pro-abortion or atheists. Instead, they have shunned publicappeals to religion in matters of personal choice and scientific research. 

Taking a cue from the Obama campaign, the BJP wooed India’sgrowing tech savvy generation through an internet blog for its eighty-one yearold prime ministerial candidate. Of course, this was the wrong cue because themedium is not always the message. Failing to go beyond the hollow trappings ofmodern technology, the Hindutva party’s youngest candidate, Varun Gandhi,spewed communal venom against Muslims in his campaign speeches. The partyoffered more of the same divisive politics to a generation of youth that likelyconnected this hate politics with the distressing images of Mumbai’s siege inNovember 2008. Only weeks before the Mumbai attacks, young Indians had seenAmerica’s ability to elect Obama and transcend racial cleavages that havemarked the US since its founding. The lesson the Indian youth seem to have takenfrom these events is that attacking minorities instead of including them inIndia’s mainstream would only make all Indians more unsafe.   

In contrast, the Congress successfully reworked the populardiscourse so that the values of pluralism, secularism and egalitarian growthwere once again seen as desirable rather than signs of Hindu weakness. Successof social welfare schemes coupled with steady economic growth resonated withvoters cutting across the urban-rural divide, many of whom were young people.Like the rejuvenated Democrats in the US, the Congress seems more confident inespousing the dictate of "inclusive growth" without apologies. RahulGandhi’s efforts to democratise the party machinery and inducting young blooddampened the age old, unimaginative dynasty debate in Indian politics.  

Young Indians and Americans appear to be less apathetic andcynical. Unlike the youth of the 1960s counter movement who dissented byremaining outside the political system, this generation is beginning to enterthe political process at different levels. They seem to prefer moderate,left-of-centre politics over exclusionary right-wing campaigns. According toMichael Dawson, "What we are seeing in India and the US will have long termramifications within the two countries, but we can also expect this to become atrend internationally." To what extent the Democrats led by Obama and theCongress led by Rahul Gandhi will use the transformational potential of theyouth to craft a humane and inclusive politics for the 21^st centuryremains to be seen. The possibilities are immense. 

Mona G.Mehta is a PhD student in the Department of Political Science at theUniversity of Chicago.