This is the billion dollar question today!
The PM appears to be working hard, taking bold decisions like surgical strikes and demonetisation and yet whether it is your Facebook page or Twitter page, a bunch of cynics (usually a minority) just go on and on criticising the Prime Minister. They rarely find anything to like about the PM. These are the usual types - 'Intellectual' so called Liberals and those from minority religion groups. They are usually silent about Kejriwal and Rahul Gandhi inspite of what one can see are obvious goofs by the two. Many of them dislike Trump and disagree that BREXIT was a good thing for the UK. What is really wrong with these 'intellectual types'? Are they disconnected with the reality because of their so called 'intellectual arrogance'?
Way back when I started my career working with politicians, this is one of the first questions I was confronted in Maharashtra. While we were nicely able to explain why 80% of one caste group had voted for a party, we were struggling to explain why 20% did not. The difficulty became particularly stark when we realised that voter A (35 years) living in building X (Income 10 lacs, Wife not working, 2 children, 2 parents in household) voted differently from voter B (35 years) also living in building X ((Income 10 lacs, Wife not working, 2 children, 2 parents in household). Further analysis revealed no significant demographic differences. Yet, both of them voted differently. What are we to do with such 'inexplicable differences'? Afterall I could not go and tell my client that one was a bhaktand other was an adarsh liberal. My client would kick me for such explanations.
In fact, one would wonder what makes someone a bhakt and what makes on an adarsh liberal or an aaptard.
Then I met Shalom Schwartz
I rather ran into him on Google. Schwartz created a battery of statements that measured universal human values. Essentially he hypothesized that human needs could be broken up into 3 parts - Biological needs, social needs and needs related to welfare of groups. He identified 10 value types and associated values around them (I am liberally copying from wiki)
Power: authority; leadership; dominanceAchievement: success; capability; ambition; influence; intelligence; self-respectHedonism: pleasure; enjoying lifeStimulation: daring activities; varied life; exciting lifeSelf-direction: creativity; freedom; independence; curiosity; choosing your own goalsUniversalism: broadmindedness; wisdom; social justice; equality; a world at peace; a world of beauty; unity with nature; protecting the environment; inner harmonyBenevolence: helpfulness; honesty; forgiveness; loyalty; responsibility; friendshipTradition: accepting one's portion in life; humility; devoutness; respect for tradition; moderationConformity: self-discipline; obedienceSecurity: cleanliness; family security; national security; stability of social order; reciprocation of favours; health; sense of belonging
An excellent write up on the Schwartz model is available here.
Our own experience in India has been fascinating. We indeed found differences between those who liked Mr Modi and those who did not. For example one big difference was on Power. Those who voted the BJP tended to be place moreemphasis on Power than those who did not. Those who voted ant-BJP parties tended to place more emphasis on Universalism. Indians in general placed high emphasis on security, benevolence and achievement (irrespective of which party they voted). This is one reason why when there is a security threat, voters tend to mill around a candidate (who appeared to be security driven) even if he did not fully match with their values. One reason why the British abandoned Mr Churchill 2 months after end of world war 2 in Europe. When we studied such people outside politics, we found that they behaved quite differently as well. In organisations for example, comparing the behaviours of Bhakt managers with those who opposed Mr Modi was quite illuminating. Most Bhakt managers tended to have a parent child relationship with their juniors while the non-bhakts tended to have an adult-adult relationship with their juniors. Similar differences existed in how they chose consumer brands as well. This is a field in need of more research and we have just started scratching the surface
The model however was not perfect.Every voter appeared to provide some weight for every value type and the differences in fact were much smaller than I had expected. However, the small differences did explain most if not all of the differences. At the end it appeared how well the parties appealed to these values made a huge difference to how they voted at the end. In the 2014 election for example, the large scale shift from the Congress to BJP in many cities included many 'adarsh liberals' (some of who shifted back to AAP in Delhi and many others to JD(U)/RJD in Bihar). Smart political parties and politicians are often able to cross the aisle with messages that attracted voters who did not necessarily share their values fully. Mr Modi managed that extremely well in 2014.
But why are our values different?
So while values explain the voting differences, we must know where these values themselves come from? There are a variety of theories but it is fairly well accepted that they come from the social environment around you starting from home, you neighbourhood, your school and then all the exposures you have had in your life (education, international experience etc). The values tool is available in the link below for you to test and try and know why you support or hate Mr Modi (try it along with a friend who has opposite political views)
The output from the above tool is as follows (mostly American users currently) -Yourmorals.org
The biggest variations exist on conformity, Security, Power, Tradition, Hedonism, Universalism and Stimulation. In India, the variations were much narrower as we are probably a far less evolving society. Our biggest variations were on Power, Hedonism and Universalism (from the studies we completed)
In sum, The differences between us on why we like or hate Mr Modi is not because one group is more intelligent or dumber than the other. It is also not because one group is more nationalistic while the other thinks of itself only as patriotic or any other above surface explanations. It is only because we are beautiful human beings with different experiences and learnings. We tend to like people who match our values and generally tend to dislike people who appeared not to match with our values. Politicians who do their best to match with our values tend to win more of our support and votes versus politicians who donot. The smartest politicians are the ones who figure out which value will deliver the most votes at any point in time. So in the future, when you find this thoroughly irritating Facebook friend, ask him/her to go through the Schwarz quiz (above) and understand why you are different from each other.
Knowing your friends better is perhaps more fun than fighting over Mr Modi.
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