Middle-class Populism: Political Inequalities and Populist Appeal in India

Abstract

Populist appeals resonate in contemporary India because of political inequalities. These inequalities persist because political parties are stuck in a reciprocity trap that favours local elites, who provide the party with financial support and resources. This reciprocity trap not only perpetuates political inequalities but also leads to the systematic marginalization of the poor by political parties who remain less receptive to populist appeals by a political leader. This article shows that the middle class, not the poor, were more receptive to populist messages in the 2024 elections. Even though Modi remained immensely popular, the middle classes found Rahul Gandhi’s populist message more compelling. The analysis is based on the pre-and post-election surveys from 2024 and other NES surveys.

Keywords

Inequalities Lok Sabha 2024 middle-class populism

It is widely acknowledged that the electoral success of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2014 national elections was due to the populist appeal of its leader, Narendra Modi (Palshikar, 2015). The 2014 national election was not the first time a populist appeal has upended the party system in India. While party systems in India, at the national and State levels, are commonly understood through the lens of caste and religious divisions and the particularities of State politics, populism has been the source of significant party system change in India. The reassertion of the Congress party’s dominance under Indira Gandhi in the 1970s and the triumph of many State-level parties like the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) of Tamil Nadu, the Telugu Desam Party of Andhra Pradesh under N. T. Rama Rao, and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in West Bengal are all driven by populist politics.

Echoing Naseemullah and Chhibber (2024), this article attributes the power of populist appeals in contemporary India to persisting political inequalities. Instead of levelling the playing field, political parties contribute to political inequalities because they are caught in what Jensenius and Chhibber (2024) term a reciprocity trap, thereby remaining beholden to local influentials and the moneyed elites. By limiting access to political parties and the electoral process to those within party networks, the reciprocity trap creates conditions for a leader to say that she stands for the people against a corrupt political elite that is thwarting people’s aspirations. As I show in this article, this populist appeal in contemporary India is more prevalent among the middle classes than the poor.

The first part of the article, after a brief discussion of the concept of populism, links populism in contemporary India to persisting political inequalities, particularly a belief that political parties and the state privilege only those connected to it. After setting the stage for the 2024 elections, the second section discusses the prevalence of populist sentiments in India. The third section discusses the reciprocity trap and shows that the reciprocity trap privileges the few while excluding the poor. I show that the reciprocity trap ties ruling parties to local power structures, generating political inequalities. The reciprocity trap also limits a party’s ability to reach poor voters, whom parties do not actively mobilize even during election time. The poor remain less attached to parties, elections, and the democratic political process. The middle classes, on the other hand, are more politically engaged, and they respond to populist messages and identify populist leaders. The next part of the article shows that the middle classes are more likely to say that Rahul Gandhi, not Narendra Modi, is trying to reduce the undue hold of influential people. Just because the middle classes do not think that Modi is trying to curb the role of influential people does not mean that Modi is not popular. In the last section, I show that Modi’s presence continues to help mobilize voters for the BJP. The article concludes with some caveats and implications.

Before we proceed, it’s important to emphasize that populism is often confused with popular policies. Populist politics draws a clear line between the elites and the masses. A populist leader or a party position themselves as champions of the common people against a corrupt elite. Governments can implement popular policies, such as social housing programs, healthcare coverage, or financial aid for the less fortunate, without challenging elite influence or creating tension between the elites and the masses. Populism thrives on the tension between the masses and the elite establishment, and if a party’s programs or policies fail to do so, labelling them as populist would be incorrect. Popular public policies cater to the needs and desires of ordinary people without necessarily addressing the structural inequalities between the masses and an elite political class. Pro-poor or popular policies like welfare programs may be well-liked but are not inherently populist. Similarly, leaders can be popular without being considered populist. For instance, Nehru was widely popular but is not generally regarded as a populist leader. Similarly, while Modi enjoys popularity, it’s debatable whether his leadership today embodies populist sentiments, which hinge on representing the ordinary people against a corrupt elite.

Political Inequalities and Populism

There is widespread consensus that populism is an orientation to ‘mass-ness’. Kazin (1995), for instance, writing on populism in the United States, defines it as ‘a language whose speakers conceive of ordinary people as a noble assemblage not bounded narrowly by class, view their elite opponents as self-serving and undemocratic, and seek to mobilize the former against the latter’ (1). Similarly, Mudde (2004) characterizes populism as ‘an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite,” and argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people’ (54).

Populism, as Naseemullah and Chhibber (2024) point out, is more prevalent in South Asia than in any other region of the world. In India, they argue that populist politics has always pointed to a political elite as serving its vested interests, not those of the people. Populist leaders from Indira Gandhi to Narendra Modi and many others at the State level, including Mamata Banerjee, N. T. Rama Rao and M. G. Ramachandran, to name a few, stress that their leadership will end the rule of the corrupt political elite. The idea that political inequalities drive populism in India emanated from studies of the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu, which, in the 1950s, led a populist upsurge against a Sanskritic Brahmanical political establishment based in north India and their elite co-partisans in the state.² Kenny (2017) also links the appeal of populism in India to the dominance of local party apparatchiks who persist at the subnational level in India’s patronage democracy.³ Indira Gandhi and Narendra Modi succeeded in 1971 and 2014, respectively, by promising an end to the system of local brokers who controlled access to the state.⁴

Building on these arguments, Naseemullah and Chhibber (2024) link populism not to inequality in general but to politically salient inequality. They understand politically salient inequality as instances where the state is implicated in defending or fostering inequities rather than ending them. Parties and politicians, supposed to represent the public face of political authority, instead work for the few, not the many, and hide behind faceless and uncaring bureaucracies while creating shortcuts for favoured clients and constituencies. In Naseemullah and Chhibber’s rendering, the corrupt elite in India is the political elite that, instead of working for the people, is working against them. This perception cuts deeply against the moral contract made by the state with its citizens at independence, under which the state’s political obligation to its citizens is that those in power should not foster inequality, especially the inequality generated by the state and the political system, either directly or indirectly. Populists succeed when they demonstrate to enough voters that the state and its agents, particularly political parties, violate norms of equality: that the political system is providing unjust access to the privileged few. The argument developed by Naseemullah and Chhibber (2024) has three straightforward implications. First, the origins of populism in India lie in political inequalities or the inequalities created by a state and its agents (parties and bureaucrats). Second, populism, at least in India, is a political strategy invoked by a leader to present herself as the agent of change to win an election. Once in power, a populist leader can no longer present herself as an outsider fighting against a ‘political system’ she heads. This is especially true because almost all populists centralize power in the name of ‘changing the system’. Third, almost all successful populists are well-established political leaders (with N. T. Rama Rao, a notable exception) who either create a new party or engineer a take-over of an existing party. Indira Gandhi notably split the Indian National Congress, and Narendra Modi led a palace coup against the leaders of the BJP in 2013.

Indira Gandhi’s populist appeal was built on resentments against the post-colonial state, in which structures of inequity constituted concrete legacies of colonial rule and elite privileges and gross inequality were allowed to persist by the forbearance of those in power. Indira Gandhi, a fixture of Congress party politics since the 1950s, railed against the privileges of the few, split the Congress, establishing herself as the undisputed leader of the new party - the Congress (R), and centralized authority in the office of the Prime Minister once the Congress (R) won a majority after the 1971 elections. The left-populist mobilization of Indira Gandhi had profound consequences in expanding the size and scope of the state and reframing political competition as control over the state’s resources and authority. The engorged and fragmented state, combined with a spectacular dispersion of politically determined rents from economic liberalization, fundamentally changed the nature of Indian politics. The state presented new forms of inequality that exclude middle-class strivers without political connections across extant cleavages in India, now alienated from representation and patronage networks that increasingly determine economic and social success.

In 2014, Narendra Modi, a long-serving BJP Chief Minister, building on the anti-corruption social movements of Anna Hazare presented the Congress party as the corrupt political elite and himself and the BJP as the party that would represent the people. In the campaign for the 2014 elections, Modi pointed to the corruption and dynasticism of the Congress-UPA government—and contrasted it with his humble roots. In a mass rally early in the campaign, he asked,

Today there is a conflict between Parivarshahi [rule by the (Nehru-Gandhi) family] and Lokshahi [rule by the people] and the former is strangling the latter. Will we run on the constitution or on the wishes of the prince? This is what we have to decide.⁵

Modi contrasted the Congress’s corruption and nepotism with the BJP’s meritocracy and his own story:

See the values of the BJP, see the culture of the Party. A man who sold tea to make ends meet has been put here. I was never a ruler in the past, I am not a ruler now and I do not aspire to be a ruler in the future. I am a humble servant of the people and will remain so in future.⁶

Dynastic politics and corruption were at the core of Modi’s critique. These claims evoked political inequities and favouritism and suggested to voters that he would represent the pure people against the corrupt political elite. He famously engineered a palace coup and established himself as the undisputed leader of the BJP. As with the Congress party under Indira Gandhi, power is now centralized in the office of the Prime Minister. As Modi grew more powerful, central government policies began to be presented as Modi’s policies. For instance, Modi’s health minister, Harsh Vardhan, ensured Modi’s photo was on every COVID vaccine certificate. There has also been a proliferation of schemes emanating from the central government termed a Prime Minister’s scheme, ranging from holistic nourishment to fisheries, maternity support, lighting, etc. In the 2024 elections, the dominant theme of Modi’s campaign was centred around him and ‘Modi’s guarantees’ of economic welfare. In other words, Modi was no longer a disruptor of the status quo, as in 2014, was promising that the state he led would deliver on its promises. A word count of his speeches as reported by the Quint shows that they were largely self-referential and focused on the Congress rather than a populist message that would have stressed how he was fighting for the common person against a corrupt elite.⁷

The 2024 Election and Populism

By the time of the 2024 elections, Modi had been in power for 10 years, undermining his ability to present himself as leading a populist movement against a corrupt political elite. He is no longer an outsider intent on reforming the system. The BJP today, like the Congress in 2014, is seen as corrupt (working for itself and not the people) and nepotistic. In the 2024 post-election survey, respondents were asked whether the ‘BJP today is more corrupt than the BJP of earlier years or less corrupt than the BJP of the past’. Almost a quarter of the respondents (22%) said the BJP was more corrupt. An additional 15% said that the BJP was always corrupt. Only 29% of respondents said the BJP was either never corrupt or more corrupt earlier. The BJP is now also perceived as nepotistic. The pre-poll asked respondents their opinion on the following statement: ‘Earlier people used to say that BJP was less nepotistic than Congress. Now, some people believe BJP has become as nepotistic as the Congress’. Twenty-three percent of the respondents thought the BJP was more nepotistic than the Congress; another 23% said that the BJP was less nepotistic than the Congress, suggesting that the BJP was nepotistic but less than the Congress. Only 16% of the respondents believed that the BJP was not nepotistic. While the BJP may have come to power in 2014 on a populist appeal that offered a trenchant critique of the nepotism and corruption in the Congress era, today, the BJP itself is perceived as corrupt and nepotistic. Modi and the BJP can no longer credibly present themselves as representing the pure people against a corrupt political elite because it is the corrupt political elite itself.

Data from the 2024 NES pre-poll shows that the conditions for populism are still prevalent in India, with a substantial portion of the population pointing to a political elite thwarting the people’s aspirations. The NES pre-poll asked respondents who were most responsible for ‘blocking the progress of people like you’. This question allows respondents to single out which group of people is thwarting their progress. Varshney et al. (2021) argue that only respondents who said that an undefined elite (the influential people) was standing in the way of their progress should be properly considered as having a proclivity towards populism. Of course, other groups, too, could block people’s progress. Varshney et al. also include groups who block people’s progress including minorities, Migrants and Outsiders (assuming that BJP supporters may be more likely to refer to these categories) and Lower and upper castes (to account for caste dominance and those who suffer from it). They report that 48% of the respondents harboured populist attitudes, that is, say that influential people block their progress. In 2024, Lokniti expanded the original list to include politically influential groups - Political Parties and the bureaucracy. Two other additional groups were included to account for the current political situation in which Religious Leaders/Hate speech makers and Corporate houses that are becoming more prominent. Table 1 shows that populist sentiments that an elite works against the people are quite common in India. Forty-three percent of respondents pointed to influentials, political parties, and bureaucrats as standing in their way. For the remainder of the analysis in this article, I categorize the populist response into two groups: respondents who singled out influential people as blocking their progress to be consistent with Varshney et al. (2021) and respondents who point to political inequalities, expressly parties as being in their way (this is consistent with Naseemullah and Chhibber’s depiction of party-led political inequality as central to successful populist appeals. To assess which candidate or party is populist (i.e., working to reduce the power of the influential people), the NES pre-poll asked respondents separate questions to identify which leader or party was likely to reduce the impact of influential people.

Table 1.

Who Stops Progress of People.

	Percent
Influentials	21
Minorities	4
Migrants and outsiders	4
Upper caste	7
Political parties	18
Bureaucracy	5
Religious leaders/hate speech makers	7
Big corporate houses	7
Do not know	27

Note: Data from the NES 2024 pre-poll survey. Respondents were asked who among the above-listed groups was most responsible for blocking the progress of people like you.

The Reciprocity Trap⁸

Why do so many Indian citizens continue to harbour populist sentiments and point to parties, bureaucrats, and an undefined elite as blocking their progress? One reason is the allegations of corruption against various BJP leaders, and second, that the BJP, despite its protestations against dynastic politics, has taken to supporting political families locally. However, a third reason has recently been explicated by Jensenius and Chhibber (2024) for why parties foster political inequalities. They argue that political parties in India, instead of representing all the people, are caught in a reciprocity trap and, hence, are, more often than not, networks of elites who use parties to gain access to state resources. Jensenius and Chhibber (2024) note that parties come to power with the help of local influentials who, in turn, expect the party to favour them upon coming to power. These local influentials, often the social and economic elite locally, mobilize votes for the party, fund the party’s campaigns, and expect parties to ‘pay them back’ once the party comes to power. This reciprocity trap persists in India because of how political parties are organized and the expenses of running a campaign.

Parties in India are generally known to be weak (Chhibber et al., 2014) and reliant on private funding for election campaigns. It is very expensive to run an election campaign. According to a National Election Audit conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in 1999, the average winner spent ₹83 lakhs million on their campaign, and the average runner-up spent ₹68 lakhs (Gowda & Sridharan, 2012, 234). Kapur and Vaishnav (2018) estimates that during the 2014 elections, the campaign cost political parties ₹4000 crores. Some of this money is spent on legitimate expenses such as campaign materials and salaries for campaign workers. Politicians also need to raise money for handouts and gifts to voters, even though evidence shows that distributing money rarely pays off.⁹ It is, by and large, agreed that the money spent by a candidate at election time is no guarantee of victory (Björkman, 2014).¹⁰

All this money must come from somewhere. Parties do not bankroll their candidates’ campaigns but expect their nominees to fund a large chunk of their campaigns themselves (Sircar, 2018). Some of it comes from politicians’ personal funds, who are mostly from wealthy families (Vaishnav, 2017). According to a survey of MLAs conducted in Bihar, Jharkhand, and Uttar Pradesh 2012–2014, 88% of those interviewed said they had spent personal resources on their campaign (Bussell, 2016). Some money comes from donations and gifts from businesses, individuals, or interest groups—all of whom expect to receive money or favours in return.¹¹ More recently, the BJP introduced electoral bonds, now declared illegal by the Supreme Court of India, as a means for corporations to donate to parties.⁷

The organizational weakness of parties, large constituencies and expensive campaigns leads parties to rely on local ‘influentials’ as vote mobilizers (Chhibber & Ostermann, 2015). These local-level political actors can be party members. However, they are mostly representatives of caste or religious organizations, individuals with particular personal attributes that make them locally powerful, self-proclaimed brokers, or elected village politicians (see Auerbach & Thachil, 2018; Krishna, 2003; Kruks-Wisner, 2018; Martin & Michelutti, 2017). These vote mobilizers communicate between politicians and voters, organize rallies or other events, and help candidates campaign. They are, in other words, responsible for bridging the immense distance between parties and voters. Some of these local vote mobilizers might have ideological affinities to parties. Most are, however, associated with a candidate or a party because political links can lead to upward economic and social mobility—and either way, they expect financial or other favours in return for their efforts. Because of how fluid the connections between parties and their vote mobilizers can be, Auerbach et al. (2022) suggest that Indian parties can better be thought of as networks connecting people to influential people rather than as vertically integrated organizations.¹²

Politicians honour this expectation of favours and reciprocity from their vote mobilizers once they are elected to office because of the power they wield over the bureaucracy, the police, and even the judiciary (Aney et al., 2021; Poblete-Cazenave, 2023). The bureaucracy complies because politicians have significant control over their careers and well-being: those who do not cooperate are transferred to undesirable locations (Iyer & Mani, 2012). At the same time, those willing to bend the rules to favour their political bosses become a part of the web of reciprocity from which they can benefit. As a result, the bureaucracy, by and large, is politicized, and political parties in India are powerful because elected officials at the state and national levels exercise significant control over the state, not only over its policies but also its personnel.

Compelling evidence for parties working for those in political networks comes from response to NES questions on whether a respondent has benefitted from a government scheme aimed at the common people. An analysis of responses shows that vote mobilizers benefit more from state largesse. In 2024, 18% of the respondents to the NES post-poll could be classified as vote mobilizers because they participated in any one of these three activities: door-to-door canvassing, putting up posters and leaflets for the party or candidate, and distributing messages for the party over social media. As shown in Table 2, the vote mobilizers are much more likely to have benefitted from various government schemes.

Table 2.

Vote Mobilizers and Welfare Benefits.

	Regular Voters	Vote Mobilizer	Difference
Benefitted (no PDS)	39	50	–11.51^*
Benefitted (including PDS)	73	83	–14.65^*

Notes: Data from the NES 2024 survey. Vote mobilizers are those individuals who participated in door-to-door canvassing, put up posters and leaflets for the party or candidate, and distributed messages to the party over social media. ‘Benefitted’ includes individuals who say they benefitted from the government schemes Awas Yojana, Ayushman Bharat, and Ujjwala. The second row includes those who say they benefitted from the Public Distribution System (PDS) for affordable food grains.

* Means significant at the 5% level in a two-sample t-test.

Who is a Populist? The Poor or the Middle Classes?

Jensenius and Chhibber (2024) observe that the elite-centred nature of party politics leads to a systematic marginalization by parties and politicians of those without economic resources - largely the poor. Even at election time, when we expect parties to mobilize every vote, the NES data shows that parties contact the poor less often. In this analysis, I use the class index created by Lokniti, which divides respondents into four categories: poor, lower class, middle class, and upper class.⁸ Table 3 shows that in the 2024 election, the poor were less contacted in person (by 6%) and over social media (by 13%). Using imperfect measures of class, the party contact data shows that even at election time, when parties should reach everyone, the poor remain outside the ambit of parties.

Table 3.

Economic Class and Party Contact.

	Poor	Not Poor	T-test
In-person contact	57	67	–12.99^*
Social media contact	48	62	–17.99^*
Any contact	65	77	–15.62^*

Note: *p .001 Data from NES surveys. Respondents were asked whether any candidate or party worker had come to their house to ask for their vote in the month before the elections and whether they were contacted by a party over social media. Any contact measures whether an individual is contacted via social media or in person.

While party contact has been unequal across class groups in recent elections, identity groups have been contacted at similar rates. As Table 4 shows, this was not the case in 1971, when the first NES was conducted. In 1971, individuals with higher social status were more likely to be contacted by parties. However, none of the surveys conducted since 1996 indicate that the upper castes are contacted at higher rates than all other groups. Exactly which group comes out on top varies across the year. Still, at the time of the 2024 elections, more than half the respondents across all the most politicized identity groups said they had been contacted by at least one party during the campaign. In 2024, the Muslims and the Upper Castes reported somewhat lower levels of contact than other groups.

Table 4.

Identities and Party Contact.

	1971	1996	1999	2004	2009	2019	2024
Upper castes	51	41	55	56	60	58	62
OBC	43	45	48	57	61	59	71
SC	36	47	44	57	61	56	68
ST	30	18	34	47	53	50	69
Muslims	35	50	55	53	54	53	55

Note: Table from Jensenius and Chhibber (2024). The data is from various NES surveys. Respondents were asked whether any candidate or party worker had come to their house to ask for their vote in the month before the elections.

For the most part, there is a large gap, however, in whether parties contact those within each identity group that we categorize as poor or not poor. As I report in Table 5, the poor are less likely to be contacted across identity groups, except for the upper castes. There is no difference in the contact rates for poor and non-poor upper caste respondents in the 2024 survey. Given that an explicit focus of the BJP campaign was to reach out to the poor, it seems they have reached out to approximately the same share of poor and non-poor upper caste voters in these elections only. For other groups, the class gap in party contact remains similar to previous years (see Table 5).

The 2024 NES and data from earlier surveys show that party-led political inequality lies at the heart of electoral politics in India. The lack of engagement by the poor is not only because they are poor and have fewer civic skills Verba and Nie (1987) but also because parties contact them less. Once they are contacted, we find that the marginal impact of party contact is the same for the poor as it is for the non-poor. As Table 6 shows, when the poor are contacted, they are 10% more likely to vote for the party of choice, 10% more likely to have interest in the campaign, 15% more likely to trust parties, and 18% more likely to be close to a party. The effect of party contact on the poor is similar to the effect of party contact among the non-poor. The latter are 6% more likely to vote for the party of choice, 5% more likely to have interest in the campaign, 16% more likely to trust parties and 16% more likely to be close to a party. The poor and the non-poor were also less likely to disclose whom they voted for or did not vote for when parties did not contact them by 10%.

Table 5.

Identities, Class and Party Contact.

		In Person	Social Media
Upper caste	Not poor	62	61
	Poor	61	54
OBC	Not poor	75	67
	Poor	59	50
SC	Not poor	71	64
	Poor	62	48
ST	Not poor	72	70
	Poor	66	52
Muslims	Not poor	60	51
	Poor	48	34

Note: Data from the NES 2024 post-poll survey. Respondents were asked whether any candidate or party worker had come to their house to ask for their vote in the month before the elections.

Table 6.

Party Contact in Person or over Social Media and Political Inclusion.

	Poor No Contact	Poor Contacted	Not Poor No Contact	Not Poor Contacted
Voted for party of choice	69	79	75	80
Great deal of interest in the campaign	21	31	25	30
Trust political parties	41	56	44	58
Close to a party	30	48	33	49
Did not disclose or did not vote	20	10	17	7

Note: Data from the NES 2024 post-poll survey. Respondents were asked whether any candidate or party worker had come to their house to ask for their vote in the month before the elections. The 2024 data includes social media contact.

The data shows that the poor are disassociated from the political process because parties do not contact them in person or over social media. Once the poor are contacted, their political attitudes and behaviour resemble those of the nonpoor. The systematic exclusion of the poor by parties influences whether the poor have an opinion about who stands in their way. Thirty-one percent of the poor say they do not know who prevents their progress compared with only 24% of the non-poor do. That almost a third of the poor cannot identify who stands in their way is not simply because the poor do not have opinions on many political matters. The poor have clearly defined opinions on lived experiences, such as development and prices, but are less likely to have an opinion on more abstract issues related to government policy. Only 9% of the poor replied do not know when asked if development was for all or only the rich; 4% said do not know when asked whether prices had gone up, and only 10% could not identify whether it was the central or state government that responsible for the price rise. Once the questions become explicitly political, asking about which party should form the government or a particular government policy, the proportion of do not know increases substantially. For instance, when respondents were asked whether the BJP government should get another chance, a quarter of the poor said they did not know. Almost half (47%) replied do not know when they were asked whether the BJP’s use of the central agencies like the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Director was vindictive. In the post-poll, respondents were asked a related question: whether the arrests of opposition leaders suggested that BJP leaders were less corrupt or whether opposition leaders were arrested for political reasons. Forty-two percent of the poor said they did not know. Among the poor who were contacted, the percentage who said they did not know about this question dropped by almost 10%, illustrating the significance of party contact in influencing political opinions.

The Poor and Populist Politics in Contemporary India

As the poor remain outside the ambit of political parties and their supporters, they are not as susceptible to populist messages since they are less likely to identify a particular party or leader who can curb the power of influential people in Indian society. In two separate questions, the NES pre-poll asked respondents if a party or a leader was working to curb the undue hold of influential people. This is a direct, but perhaps imperfect, way to assess which leader or party is perceived as a populist.¹³ Table 7 shows the poor are less likely to identify a particular party or leader as working for the ‘people’. The differences among the poor and those who are not poor are small but statistically significant.

Table 7.

The Poor and Their Ability to Identify Agents of Populism.

	Not Poor	Poor	Difference
Political party	21	24	–4.14^*
Leader	24	29	–5.12^*

Note: Table entries are the proportion of respondents who cannot identify a party or a leader working to reduce the undue hold of influential people.

Middle Class Populism

Populist sentiments are more prevalent among the middle classes. As we have seen above, the poor are less likely to identify who is standing in their way and which party or candidate is more likely to curb the power of influential people. We observed that this is not because of some inherent lack of knowledge but because parties systematically exclude the poor from party networks. Since parties contact the poor at lower rates and do not reach out to them as often over social media, the poor are less likely to identify which party and leader is a populist or will reduce the power of influential people. The middle classes, who are not the elite, are approached by parties, have access to social and mainstream media, and are likelier to harbour populist attitudes.

The middle classes, unlike the poor, are more politically engaged. They are more likely to attend political rallies or even local nukkad meetings where a candidate or a representative may deliver her populist message. As Figure 1 shows, the middle classes were likelier to attend rallies and neighbourhood meetings than the poor and the rich.

Figure 1.

Class and Political Participation, 2024.

To isolate the effects of being middle class from other social classes, I recoded the class variable into two categories—combining the lower classes and the middle classes into one category—the middle class and collapsing the rich and the poor into another category those who are not middle classes. Table 9 shows that the middle classes are more likely to say that influential people and the political elite stand in their way with most of the difference because the middle classes find parties and bureaucrats responsible for thwarting their progress.

Table 8.

Middle Class and Populist Attitudes.

	Middle Class	Not Middle Class	Difference
Influentials and political elite	46	42	–3.97^*
Political elite	24	21	–3.609^*
Influentials	21	20	–1.66

Note: Data from the NES 2024 survey.

Table 9.

The Middle Classes and Ability to Identify Agents of Populism.

	Not Middle	Middle	Difference
Political party	27	24	4.05^*
Leader	24	21	3.62^*

Note: Table entries are the proportion of respondents who cannot identify a party or a leader working to reduce the undue hold of influential people. Data from the NES 2024 survey.

The middle classes, also have much less difficulty in identifying which party or leader is working to reduce the hold of influential people.

Attitudes about whether influential people and the political elite block the progress of people can be affected by other factors, including caste and religion, gender, age, and the political circumstances prevalent at the moment. Given the marginalization of Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims, and other religious minorities, we could expect these groups to feel that their progress is thwarted by elites, political and otherwise, especially when compared to uppercaste Hindus. Older respondents, with more political experience, could also believe that there is the elite who stand in their way, as should men who, given the immense gender discrimination in India, are more likely to interact with others in the public sphere. Contemporaneous political conditions, especially how political power is exercised, could also influence whether a respondent has populist sentiments. I use three variables from the NES pre-poll study to capture the current political environment: whether corruption had increased, whether the BJP was as nepotistic as the Congress, and whether the BJP was misusing the state for political vendettas. In a sense, these three variables capture the untrammelled use of political power. We could expect that respondents who answered in the affirmative that the BJP was misusing the state for political vendettas, that corruption had increased, and that the BJP was nepotistic to harbour populist attitudes, i.e., believe that there is an elite, especially a political elite, that is using the state for itself and thereby blocking people’s progress. Table 10 reports the estimates from four linear regressions with two dependent variables and two class categories. The first (Political Parties) categorizes the populist response into two categories: those who said political parties were getting in the way of the people’s progress and everyone else. Those respondents who said do not know were dropped from the analysis. The second is also a categorical variable separating respondents who singled out influential people (Influentials) from everyone else and, once again, excluded those who said they do not know. One set of regressions assesses whether the poor identify political parties and the influentials as standing in their way. The second set examines if the middle-classes can identify who is blocking their progress.

Table 10.

Class and Populism.

	Dependent Variable
	Political Parties		Influentials
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)
Poor	−0.017^*		−0.021^**
	(0.009)		(0.009)
Middle class		0.029^***		0.014^*
		(0.008)		(0.008)
OBC	−0.025^**	−0.027^***	0.065^***	0.063^***
	(0.010)	(0.010)	(0.011)	(0.011)
Dalit	−0.003	−0.005	0.038^***	0.034^**
	(0.013)	(0.013)	(0.014)	(0.014)
Adivasis	−0.036^**	−0.037^**	0.016	0.011
	(0.017)	(0.017)	(0.018)	(0.018)
Muslim	0.025^*	0.023	−0.049^***	−0.050^***
	(0.014)	(0.014)	(0.015)	(0.015)
Others	0.036^**	0.035^**	−0.034^**	−0.036^**
	(0.014)	(0.014)	(0.015)	(0.015)
Gender	−0.034^***	−0.034^***	0.005	0.005
	(0.008)	(0.008)	(0.008)	(0.008)
Age	−0.004	−0.004	0.0004	0.0001
	(0.003)	(0.003)	(0.003)	(0.003)
Development for all	−0.005	−0.005	0.021^**	0.021^**
	(0.008)	(0.008)	(0.009)	(0.009)
Increase in corruption	0.047^***	0.048^***	0.066^***	0.066^***
	(0.008)	(0.008)	(0.009)	(0.009)
BJP is less nepotistic	−0.007	−0.007	0.006	0.007
	(0.008)	(0.008)	(0.009)	(0.009)
BJP misuses the state	0.026^***	0.026^***	0.028^***	0.030^***
	(0.008)	(0.008)	(0.009)	(0.009)
Constant	0.222^***	0.201^***	0.130^***	0.117^***
	(0.019)	(0.020)	(0.021)	(0.021)
Observations	9,873	9,873	9,873	9,873
R²	0.013	0.014	0.018	0.017
Adjusted R²	0.012	0.013	0.016	0.016
Residual Std. Error (df = 9860)	0.381	0.381	0.403	0.403
F Statistic (df = 12; 9860)	11.190^***	12.043^***	14.794^***	14.599^***

Note: ^*p < .1; ^**p < .05; ^***p < .01.

The estimates show that the middle-class has populist attitudes even when controlling for all the covariates mentioned above, but the poor do not. The coefficients for the poor are negative for the dependent variable identifying political parties as blocking their progress or respondents who thought an unidentified elite, the influential people, were blocking their progress. Middle-class respondents were likelier to point to parties blocking their progress but not an unidentified elite. Not surprisingly, compared to the upper castes, almost all other caste groups and religions have populist sentiments. Women are less likely to be populist, as are younger respondents, which could be attributed to their lack of engagement with the public sphere. Some variables measuring political conditions have the expected signs with respondents who say that corruption has increased and the BJP misuses the state more likely to be populist. However, those who believe the BJP is not less nepotistic than the Congress are more likely to be populist.

Modi, Rahul, and Populism in the 2024 Election

Does the middle class, more likely to identify political parties as blocking their progress, think that Modi is a populist leader? As discussed earlier, populism is a political strategy to attain power. Once in power, a populist, like any other leader, governs through a political party facing a reciprocity trap, that is, to win elections, the party mobilizes local influentials and the moneyed elite, thereby denting its self-representation as of the people, not the elite. Ruling parties are identified as the political elite, further tarnishing any populist image they may have cultivated during the campaign to win power. Given this, we would expect Modi to be less likely to be seen as a populist by the middle classes. But what about Rahul? Since he’s been out of power, does the middle class see him as a populist possibility? I estimated two regressions to assess whether Modi or Rahul now wears the populist mantle for the middle classes. The regressions estimated whether the middle classes viewed Modi or Rahul as a populist leader. The NES 2024 pre-poll asked respondents to identify a leader who would reduce the undue influence of the elite. I recoded the question into two categorical variables. The first coded those who said Modi would reduce the undue influence of the elite as one and others as 0, and the second coded those who said Rahul would reduce the undue influence of the elite as one and others as 0. I used all the same covariates as in Table 10, adding two additional covariates that measured whether respondents thought influentials or the political elite blocked their progress (two of the dependent variables used in Table 11).

Table 11.

Who Is a Populist Now? Rahul or Modi.

Dependent Variable:	Rahul	Modi
Dependent Variable:	(1)	(2)
Middle class	0.033^***	−0.007
	(0.008)	(0.009)
OBC	0.056^***	−0.012
	(0.010)	(0.012)
Dalits	0.055^***	0.0003
	(0.013)	(0.015)
Adivasi	0.054^***	−0.074^***
	(0.017)	(0.019)
Muslim	0.188^***	−0.228^***
	(0.014)	(0.016)
Other	0.002	−0.188^***
	(0.014)	(0.016)
Gender	−0.012	−0.001
	(0.008)	(0.009)
Age	0.002	−0.011^***
	(0.003)	(0.003)
Development for all	−0.099^***	0.224^***
	(0.008)	(0.010)
Increase in corruption	0.065^***	−0.033^***
	(0.008)	(0.009)
BJP is not nepotistic	−0.034^***	0.136^***
	(0.008)	(0.010)
BJP misuses state	0.118^***	−0.090^***
	(0.008)	(0.010)
Political elite	0.027^***	−0.014
	(0.010)	(0.011)
Undefined elite	0.031^***	0.123^***
	(0.010)	(0.011)
Constant	0.117^***	0.347^***
	(0.020)	(0.023)
Observations	9,873	9,873
R²	0.096	0.182
Adjusted R²	0.095	0.181
Residual Std. Error (df = 9858)	0.382	0.441
F Statistic (df = 14; 9858)	74.831^***	156.595^***

Note: ^*p < .1; ^**p < .05; ^***p < .01.

Table 11 shows that the middle classes are more likely to say that Rahul is a populist leader and do not think of Modi similarly. Figure 2 is a graphical representation of Table 11. It shows the numerical estimate of each coefficient and the associated standard errors. Compared to upper caste Hindus, Muslims, Adivasis, and other religious minorities do not find Modi to be a populist, whereas Rahul is seen as a populist by OBCs, Dalits, Adivasis, and Muslims. Those who hold that development has come for all and that the BJP is not nepotistic believe that Modi is a populist and less likely to see Rahul as a populist. Respondents stating that the BJP misuses the state and that corruption has increased see Rahul, not Modi, as a populist. Those respondents who believe that a political elite is blocking their progress see Rahul as able to remove the undue influence of the elite, not Modi. Modi, having been in power for 10 years, can no longer credibly claim to be the outsider who will remove political inequalities and that mantle is moving to Rahul Gandhi. Both Modi and Rahul are perceived as populists by respondents whose view of an undefined elite (or influentials) thwarts their progress.

Figure 2.

Regression Coefficients and Standard Errors.

It could be argued that the regression estimates in Table 11 assess whether Modi or Rahul are seen individually as populists, but it does not compare Modi to Rahul. To address that concern, I estimated a regression with the same covariates as in Table 1 but with the dependent variable representing those who thought Modi was the leader who could curb the power of influential people compared to those who thought Rahul was the leader who could curb the power of influential people. The results in Table 12 show that compared to Rahul, the middle classes are less likely to see Modi as a leader who can curb the power of influential people. Consistent with the expectations laid out by Naseemullah and Chhibber (2024), respondents who thought a political elite was curbing their progress were less likely to look to Modi as the leader who could curb the power of influential people. The other results are consistent with the findings in Table 11.

Table 12.

Rahul or Modi as a Populist.

Dependent Variable	Rahul or Modi
Middle class	−0.034^*** (0.011)
Hindu OBC	−0.057^*** (0.014)
Dalit	−0.049^*** (0.018)
Advisasis	−0.088^*** (0.024)
Muslims	−0.360^*** (0.021)
Others	−0.140^*** (0.023)
Gender	0.016 (0.011)
Age	−0.008^** (0.004)
Development for all	0.234^*** (0.012)
Increase in corruption	−0.079^*** (0.012)
BJP is not nepotistic	0.106^*** (0.011)
BJP misuses the state	−0.164^*** (0.012)
Political elite	−0.051^*** (0.014)
Undefined elite	0.034^*** (0.013)
Constant	1.683^*** (0.028)
Observations	5.803
R²	0.255
Adjusted R²	0.253
Residual Std. Error	0.410 (df = 5788)
F Statistic	141.683*** (df = 14; 5788)

Note: *p < 0.1; **p < 0.05; ***p < 0.01.

Popularity and Populism

While Modi is not seen as a populist anymore, that does not mean he is not the most popular leader in India (Shastri, 2024). An indicator of Modi’s popularity is his ability to mobilize voters. In the 2024 election, from the day the election was announced to the last day of campaigning, Modi appeared in over 180 rallies in 156 unique constituencies. This is far more than Rahul and Priyanka, who spoke at 120 rallies together. BJP party candidates asked for votes on Modi’s name. At a campaign meeting I attended in Maharashtra, the BJP candidate explicitly asked her party workers to reach voters in the name of Modi. The BJP’s faith in Modi as its main mobilizer is not misplaced since the NES data shows that Modi was, by a wide margin, favoured by most respondents as the Prime Minister. In the pre-poll, over 48% of the respondents preferred Modi as Prime Minister, whereas Rahul Gandhi was the choice of just over 24%. Was Modi able to capitalize on his popularity to mobilize more votes for the BJP? To answer this question, we collected data on where Modi held his rallies and the votes mobilized by the BJP in those constituencies.¹⁴ Vote mobilization is the proportion of all electors a party successfully mobilized in its favour, that is, managed to draw to the polling booth to vote for it. For instance, if a party receives 50% of the vote in a constituency and the total turnout is 60%, a party’s mobilization is 30% of all possible electors. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP mobilized about 29% of the electors in the constituencies it contested. In contrast, the Congress party mobilized 23% of all electors in the constituencies it contested. The BJP contested over 100 seats more than the Congress.

Modi’s presence did make a difference. As Figure 3 shows, in the constituencies where he held rallies, the BJP mobilized 2% more of the electors than in constituencies where he did not campaign. Given that the average size of a constituency is close to 18 lakhs, 2% greater mobilization means that the BJP party would get an additional 36,000 votes if Modi appeared. Interestingly, Modi’s ability to mobilize votes for the BJP through rallies is similar to Rahul Gandhi’s. Rahul held far fewer rallies, appearing in 67 unique constituencies. However, Rahul had a similar impact on the Congress’s ability to mobilize voters than Modi’s on the BJP’s fortunes. As Figure 4 shows, Rahul’s presence increased Congress’s number of voters mobilized by about 2.5%. The mobilization data reported in Figures 1 and 2 shows that while Modi is popular, his ability to draw more voters to the BJP does not differ from Rahul Gandhi’s ability to bring voters to the Congress. In other words, Modi is popular but not more capable than Rahul Gandhi in mobilizing electors through his rallies, keeping in mind that the results are biased because national leaders only appears in select constituencies.

Figure 3.

Modi Rallies and Voter Mobilization, 2024.

Figure 4.

Modi Rallies and Voter Mobilization, 2024.

Conclusion

This article has shown that pre-conditions for populism remain prevalent in India because parties are caught in a reciprocity trap, relying on local elites to mobilize votes. These elite then expect the party to work on their behalf. The reciprocity trap leads to persistent political inequalities. Like Indira Gandhi before him, Modi cannot dismantle this local elitepolitician nexus, and as the incumbent, is now the political elite. His campaign rhetoric that he is working for political equality does not resonate among the middle classes, who do not believe that Modi is working to reform the state when the state remains beholden to the local elite. The data suggests that the middle classes now consider Rahul Gandhi a possible populist avatar. Will Rahul Gandhi be successful in recasting himself as a populist? In the past, successful populists have either come from the outside (NT Rama Rao) or jettisoned their party to create the image of a rebel (Indira Gandhi, Mamata Banerjee, or even Narendra Modi). Rahul is too firmly tied to the Congress to present himself as a new alternative. Whether Rahul’s appeal broadens will depend on the BJP’s policies over the coming years and whether the BJP continues its practice of centralizing power and misusing the state for partisan ends, creating deeper political inequalities and opening the door for a populist appeal.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for all the comments I have received on previous versions of this article from Pranav Gupta, Adnan Naseemullah, Suhas Palshikar, Rahul Verma, and an anonymous reviewer.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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Middle-class Populism: Political Inequalities and Populist Appeal in India

Abstract

Keywords

Political Inequalities and Populism

The 2024 Election and Populism

The Reciprocity Trap 8

Who is a Populist? The Poor or the Middle Classes?

The Poor and Populist Politics in Contemporary India

Middle Class Populism

Class and Political Participation, 2024.

Modi, Rahul, and Populism in the 2024 Election

Regression Coefficients and Standard Errors.

Popularity and Populism

Modi Rallies and Voter Mobilization, 2024.

Modi Rallies and Voter Mobilization, 2024.

Conclusion

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

Notes

References

The Reciprocity Trap⁸