The World Sikh News re­pro­duces Eng­lish trans­la­tion of  Pun­jabi Tri­bune ed­i­to­r­ial by its ed­i­tor Swara­jbir Singh, pub­lished on 24 May 2019 -a day af­ter the de­c­la­ra­tion of In­di­a’s gen­eral elec­tion re­sults, ex­plain­ing the vot­ers’ psy­chol­ogy of man­date to In­dian Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi and his ilk.

WHEN Lon­don Busi­ness School dons, He­mant Kakkar and Niro Sivanathan, came up with their 2017 re­search pa­per, “When the ap­peal of a dom­i­nant leader is greater than a pres­tige leader,” it made sig­nif­i­cant waves.

In­trigued by a very Pun­jabi-sound­ing sur­name Kakkar, I fired on a whim an email seek­ing ac­cess to the en­tire re­search pa­per and the de­duc­tions the au­thors had made thereof. It was based on a sur­vey car­ried out in 2016, a year be­fore the pa­per hit acad­e­mia.

The au­thors wanted to study a num­ber of phe­nom­ena, in­clud­ing the ad­vent of Chi­nese na­tion­al­ism, rise of pop­ulist au­thor­i­tar­ian lead­ers who are over­bear­ing in their nar­ra­tive, in­clud­ing the rise of Naren­dra Modi in In­dia, the trac­tion which saw Don­ald Trump cat­a­pulted to Amer­i­can pres­i­dency, the force ma­jeure ex­hib­ited by lead­ers who ride upon pop­ulist slo­gans and beat the drums of na­tion­al­ism for the un­washed masses.

Kakkar and Sivanathan pri­mar­ily sur­veyed two kinds of lead­ers: dom­i­nant/​au­thor­i­tar­ian lead­ers who are ag­gres­sive in be­hav­iour and of­ten ex­hibit ques­tion­able moral char­ac­ter, and pres­tige lead­ers whose per­son­al­ity traits shun ag­gres­sion for sagac­ity, hu­mil­ity and a mea­sured ap­proach.

Surely, such sur­veys were not new. The largest ex­er­cise of this kind was un­der­taken in the 1940s, dur­ing and shortly af­ter World War II, by a team of re­searchers of the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley, which in­cluded Theodor W. Adorno, a highly re­garded psy­chol­o­gist known for his crit­i­cal the­ory of so­ci­ety.

It was to be fol­lowed by the pub­li­ca­tion of The Au­thor­i­tar­ian Per­son­al­ity (1950) that ex­plained why, when the go­ing gets tough, peo­ple pre­fer dic­ta­to­r­ial lead­ers and proac­tively shun log­i­cal, ra­tio­nal and saga­cious ones.

The Au­thor­i­tar­ian Per­son­al­ity trig­gered much de­bate, pri­mar­ily be­cause it sought to col­late the prin­ci­ples enun­ci­ated by Karl Marx and the the­ory of Sig­mund Freud in the same box and ar­gued that au­thor­i­tar­i­an­ism was the re­sult of a Freudian de­vel­op­men­tal model. The Au­thor­i­tar­ian Per­son­al­ity, with the Holo­caust as its im­pe­tus, proved to be highly in­flu­en­tial in the field of so­cial sci­ences and psy­chol­ogy world­wide, prompt­ing many other sim­i­lar aca­d­e­mic ven­tures.

Promi­nent re­search in this strain was car­ried out by Bob Al­te­meyer, who was then a Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chol­ogy at the Uni­ver­sity of Man­i­toba. He pro­duced a test and scale to mea­sure and un­der­stand right-wing au­thor­i­tar­i­an­ism. His re­search is ex­ten­sively doc­u­mented in the book, The Au­thor­i­tar­i­ans (2006).

Kakkar and Sivanathan’s work takes for­ward the work of their pre­de­ces­sors along the same lines. They in­ferred that when faced by the sit­u­a­tional threat of eco­nomic un­cer­tainty (as ex­em­pli­fied by the poverty rate, the hous­ing va­cancy rate, and the un­em­ploy­ment rate), peo­ple es­ca­late their sup­port for dom­i­nant lead­ers who they see as more de­ci­sive and de­ter­mined; who puts for­ward his nar­ra­tive more ef­fec­tively and au­thor­i­ta­tively; whose per­sona ex­udes dom­i­nance and in­flu­ence.

It mat­ters lit­tle, the re­search showed, what means the leader adopts in achiev­ing his ob­jec­tives. The sur­vey of­fered im­por­tant the­o­ret­i­cal ex­pla­na­tions for why, around the globe from the United States and In­dian elec­tions to the Brexit cam­paign, con­stituents con­tinue to choose au­thor­i­tar­ian lead­ers over other ad­mired/​re­spected lead­ers.

A part of Kakkar and Sivanathan’s re­search was car­ried out dur­ing the 2016 Amer­i­can pres­i­den­tial cam­paign.

 

       

 

 

 

As per this sur­vey in which par­tic­i­pants in­di­cated their vot­ing pref­er­ence for Don­ald Trump, Hillary Clin­ton, or nei­ther, the sec­tions of the pop­u­lace that were more wor­ried about un­em­ploy­ment and eco­nomic un­cer­tainty in the fu­ture be­trayed a marked pref­er­ence for Don­ald Trump. A dis­like for both Trump and Hillary came next and a pref­er­ence for just Hillary Clin­ton was the third choice.

The sur­vey ef­fec­tively showed that when a coun­try wit­nesses large scale un­em­ploy­ment and eco­nomic un­cer­tainty, it in­creases the pref­er­ence for a dom­i­nant leader as op­posed to a pres­ti­gious leader be­cause want some­one who can take tough de­ci­sions and ex­e­cute them, or claims he has the will­ing­ness to do so.

With a rise in eco­nomic un­cer­tainty, a sense of ap­pre­hen­sion dri­ves the un­der­ly­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal fears.

With no jobs in sight, peo­ple not only face eco­nomic on­slaught but also a psy­cho­log­i­cal as­sault.

Such peo­ple want a sem­blance of a crutch, of any form of sup­port. This can only come from a leader who is seem­ingly pow­er­ful, who ped­dles his nar­ra­tive loudly and with much au­thor­ity, can spew slo­gans and de­ploy lan­guage which could play on the peo­ple’s in­ner­most fears and stoke their sense of un­cer­tainty.

His­tory is wit­ness to the fact that mass psy­chol­ogy and sub­con­scious re­main un­der the ef­fect of dom­i­nant lead­ers for a long, long time.

What kind of a game is this? A game that never ends those fears, but stokes these fur­ther. A strong leader en­croaches upon the en­tire mind space and suc­cess­fully ped­dles the idea that he is the mes­siah who will end fears, ap­pre­hen­sions and un­cer­tainty. The lan­guage of pru­dence and sagac­ity does not cut any ice. What works is a nar­ra­tive of in­cite­ment, el­e­ments that fur­ther stoke the fires of fear, ap­pre­hen­sion and un­cer­tainty, false for­mu­la­tions that feed upon the ma­jori­tar­ian big­otry and the abil­ity of the leader to por­tray him­self as the biggest, strongest, shrewdest one who will not flinch from sac­ri­fice when need be.

Kakkar and Sivanathan also ran an­other sur­vey as part of their re­search in which peo­ple in cer­tain Amer­i­can towns were given a sce­nario study in which par­tic­i­pants were told about a pos­si­ble ter­ror­ist at­tack in a small US town. They were told that while lo­cal au­thor­i­ties were cer­tain that such an at­tack would oc­cur, they had lit­tle idea about where and when and so were in no po­si­tion to as­sure the peo­ple if they will be able to pre­vent it but will def­i­nitely try their level best to do so.

The par­tic­i­pants thus in­formed were asked to in­di­cate what kind of leader they would like to see elected as their pres­i­dent given the pos­si­bil­ity of such at­tacks, and their un­am­bigu­ous an­swer was Don­ald Trump. Clearly, when peo­ple are struck with fear, they choose a dom­i­nant leader over a pres­tige leader.

His­tory is wit­ness to the fact that mass psy­chol­ogy and sub­con­scious re­main un­der the ef­fect of dom­i­nant lead­ers for a long, long time.

In the sec­ond half of the last cen­tury, In­dira Gandhi and Mar­garet Thatcher come to mind as two prime ex­am­ples of this phe­nom­e­non.

In­dira Gandhi fash­ioned her­self as a leader who could take tough calls. She re­mained prime min­is­ter for 15 years (1966-1977 and 1980-84).

In­dira Gandhi fash­ioned her­self as a leader who could take tough calls. She re­mained prime min­is­ter for 15 years (1966-1977 and 1980-84).

She made the biggest blun­der of her po­lit­i­cal life by im­pos­ing Emer­gency and con­se­quently lost the 1977 elec­tion.

Till date, the Emer­gency era is re­called as a blot on the coun­try’s po­lit­i­cal his­tory but the Janta Party that came to power in 1977 could not run the gov­ern­ment with any amount of ef­fi­cacy and the very same peo­ple who had thrown out In­dira Gandhi in 1977 brought her back in 1980.

Mar­garet Thatcher de­feated the Labour Party thrice and ruled for al­most eleven and a half years.

In her ini­tial years at the helm, she took de­ci­sions against mi­grants, ef­fected cuts in pub­lic spend­ing on wel­fare mea­sures and pro­jected her­self as a tough leader. Britain wit­nessed demon­stra­tions where she was vil­i­fied as ‘Mar­garet Thatcher, Milk Snatcher’ but she con­tin­ued her win­ning streak.

These ex­am­ples and sur­veys tell the story of what per­sua­sions and causes go into the mak­ing of an elec­torate’s mind.

The lat­est elec­tion re­sults merely vin­di­cate the nar­ra­tive that the care­fully crafted per­sona of Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi and the dis­course built around Na­tion­al­ism and the at­tacks on Bal­akot have im­pacted the vot­ing be­hav­iour to a mas­sive ex­tent.

Bhar­tiya Janata Party has won even more seats than its 2004 tally even though pun­dits had pre­dicted the 282-seat bar set in 2014 as the peak that could not have been sur­mounted. Par­ties al­lied with the BJP have also gained as a re­sult of their as­so­ci­a­tion and the NDA is likely to hover around 350.

In any democ­racy, the role and re­spon­si­bil­ity of the Op­po­si­tion is no less im­por­tant than that of the rul­ing side.

The lat­est elec­tion re­sults merely vin­di­cate the nar­ra­tive that the care­fully crafted per­sona of Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi and the dis­course built around Na­tion­al­ism and the at­tacks on Bal­akot have im­pacted the vot­ing be­hav­iour to a mas­sive ex­tent.

The Con­gress party, that had started dream­ing big fol­low­ing its vic­tory in Chhatis­garh, Mad­hya Pradesh and Ra­jasthan, would not only have to play the role of the op­po­si­tion but will also have to wage a bat­tle and do some se­ri­ous in­tro­spec­tion to stem fur­ther at­ro­phy.

The next five years will be de­ci­sive for In­di­a’s democ­racy. These are the years that will put to test In­di­a’s Op­po­si­tion as to whether it can play any con­struc­tive role or re­mains a scat­tered force as it hap­pened in the pre­vi­ous five years.