The overwhelming majority said that the prices have increased and the majority said that both the state and central government should tackle the issue together.
The overwhelming majority said that the prices have increased and the majority said that both the state and central government should tackle the issue together.
Price rise appears to be major election issue for voters Gujarat in the survey conducted by Lokniti-CSDS, When respondents were asked about their voting thoughts for the upcoming assembly elections, almost half of them reported price hike as an important consideration (in open-ended questions). The share of people reporting the rise in prices as a cause for concern is unprecedented not only in comparison to past trends in Gujarat, but also in comparison to the reactions of Punjab, Goa, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, where elections were held recently. On an average, around 5% of the respondents cited price rise as an issue in the four assembly elections held earlier this year. Therefore, this issue deserves detailed analysis.
In separate questions, when respondents were asked whether prices of essential commodities had increased or decreased in the past two years, nine out of every 10 said they had increased (Table 1). In the assembly elections held in Punjab, Goa, Uttarakhand and UP also, a little over four-fifths of voters said that the prices of essential commodities have gone up. Importantly, despite acknowledging rising prices, he did not consider it an election issue (see articles published earlier in this series).
When voters were asked which government was responsible for controlling inflation, three out of five respondents said the issue should be jointly dealt with by the central and state governments (Table 2). Among the rest, two out of every 10 said rising prices should be controlled by the Gujarat government, while one in six said the central government should do the same.
The data shows that among those who believe that prices have come down or have remained the same, seven out of every 10 respondents preferred the BJP (Table 3).
On the other hand, of those who believed that prices of essential commodities had risen in the last two years, less than half indicated they would vote for the BJP, a quarter said they would prefer to vote for the AAP, and every Two out of 10 favored the Congress. Similarly, when people considered price rise to be a very important election issue, they were less likely to like the BJP than those who did not consider it an important election issue.
Jyoti Mishra and Himanshu Kapoor are researchers at Lokniti-CSDS