It is well known that as a country develops, identity politics decreases in salience and short-term factors such as governance, issue politics and economic voting, become more significant for explaining voting behaviour. Out of these, issues related to governance have been increasingly seen to effect election outcomes. Some academics studying elections in Indian states have gone to the extent of suggesting that governance and government evaluation do matter and that caste is no longer relevant for voting (Shah 2010). Other researchers, however, argue that caste continues to be the most dominant force shaping Indian politics (Jodhka 2010; Ranjan and Kumar 2009). In this paper, we examine the case of Gujarat, an Indian state whose chief minister allegedly won high marks in a report by a US think tank for his governance (NDTV story, September 14, 2011)1. The main focus of the paper is to analyse the relative contribution of caste viz-a-viz governance evaluation by a voter and its effect on his vote choice. To do so, we use data from the 2012 Gujarat elections and use logistic regression technique to determine the role of governance in politics in Gujarat. The results show that although good governance is an important and significant predictor of vote choice in Gujarat, caste-community still holds sway in determining electoral outcomes.
Caste, Good Governance, Gujarat Politics
