April 2013 – Pertinent Observations

The Upside of ADHD

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), a condition that I have, isn’t all bad. In fact, it was a recognition of the qualities of this “disorder” that led me to stop my medication for it. I figured that I prefer the with-ADHD me to the without-ADHD me. I found the latter too boring, not creative enough, and unable to connect seemingly unrelated things – something that I’ve always taken a lot of pride in.

Yet another positive of ADHD, I realized yesterday, is that it allows you to lead a “markovian” life. It allows you to easily get rid of historical baggage while taking decisions, and makes you look forward by taking a decision based on the present. Yes, it can sometimes be a bit troublesome, as it prevents you from following long-drawn-out plans, but mostly it’s a good thing.

It makes you disregard that you’d taken a decision for some reason in the past. It makes it easy for you to disconnect from your earlier decisions, and look forward. It doesn’t allow you to be swayed by emotions – on account of some decision you’d taken in the past, and instead makes you rely on rational reasons.

There’s this documentary called “ADD and loving it”. Maybe I should watch that. And maybe I’ll have something to add to that.

Banking activity and economic activity

Out on Capitalmind, Deepak Shenoy has an excellent post on the penetration of banking services in India, where he points out that 30% of all bank deposits in India are in Mumbai and Delhi. I encourage you to read that post in full.

Having read that, I was interested to see the per capita figures and compare them across states. On a whim, I decided to compare that to per capita state GDP and this is what I got:

Data source: RBI website Note: Maharashtra, Delhi and Goa have been left out because they are outliers. Some other states (Chandigarh, Gujarat and Mizoram) have been left out since their latest GSDP figures are not available — Data source: RBI website
Note: Maharashtra, Delhi and Goa have been left out because they are outliers. Some other states (Chandigarh, Gujarat and Mizoram) have been left out since their latest GSDP figures are not available

While the direction of causality cannot be clearly established, this clearly shows that banking penetration is highly correlated with economic activity.

More Karnataka: Averaging between ULB elections and 2008 elections

Recently I met my MLA, who is from the BJP, and told him about my analysis extrapolating from the recent urban local body elections, which gave Congress an absolute majority. He countered that the BJP has never been strong at the sub-state level so one shouldn’t read too much into these elections. So I decided to create this tool which uses a slider which you can use to decide how much importance to give to the ULB polls. A value of 0 represents the seat distribution as per the 2008 elections. A value of 1 uses an extrapolation of the ULB elections only (without using information from the 2008 polls). I hope you have fun with this tool.

You might also notice that I now give you the actual seat distribution party-wise.

India State Wise Road Density

Roads are one of the strongest measures of economic activity. The denser the road network in a particular area, the easier it is for people in the area to connect with and trade with each other, thus leading to a higher degree of economic activity. The graph here compares the length of roads across Indian states in 2011.

Source: Statistical Year Book India, 2013

It would also be interesting to see how different states compare in terms of addition to road length between 2009 and 2011. The graph here shows the CAGR (compounded annual growth rate) in total length of roads in each state between 2009 and 2011.

Growth in Per Capita Consumption Expenditure

Measuring people’s incomes is a hard task. There is considerable incentive to both under and overestimate one’s own income while responding to a survey. Thus, a good proxy for measuring incomes is to look at the total consumption expenditure.

One of the assignments for the ongoing batch of the Graduate Certificate in Public Policy Program asked them to analyze how the quality of life in India has changed over the last 50 years. Rishabh Raj responded to the assignment with the graph that is presented below, that shows how the per capita consumption expenditure has grown over the last 50 years. Note that the figures are adjusted for inflation. Offered without further comment:

Source: http://data.worldbank.org/country/india Numbers in 2000 rupees.

Bangalore North, South, Central, Rural

I don’t know if you want to call this gerrymandering, but I just want to pictorially map out the areas of Bangalore that fall under different parliamentary constituencies.

White: Chickballapur

Black: Bangalore North

Red: Bangalore Central

Green: Bangalore South

Blue: Bangalore Rural

Karnataka – effect of swings from 2008 election

You can use the slider below to see how changes in vote share of major parties affects the seat distribution. The “base” here is the vote share in the 2008 Assembly Elections. The numbers on the sliders are in percentages.

Update
This new version uses the vote shares in various districts during the recent Urban Local Body elections to account for the BJP split. As you can see, there is a slider that allows you to indicate how much of the split of the BJP’s votes as per the recent ULB elections will reflect in the forthcoming assembly elections. The reason for this slider is due to feedback that the split of BJP votes in the local body elections may not translate directly to the assembly elections.

There is also a slider called ‘performance impact’. This is based on data from the Daksh survey where samples of voters were asked to evaluate their sitting MLA. The way to use this is that when the slider is at 0, there is no impact of the MLA’s performance on vote share in the forthcoming elections. When it is at 5, an MLA who voters are “extremely happy” with will get 5% additional votes, and an MLA who voters are extremely unhappy with gets 5% less votes than what he did last time.

Wahhabism versus Salafism

in collaboration with Narayan Ramachandran

During a meeting at the Takshashila office last week, senior advisor to Takshashila Narayan Ramachandran pointed out what he thought was a change in language over the years in describing Islamists. “In the aftermath of 9/11”, Narayan said, “the dominant word used was wahhabi. However, over the years its use has waned and has been instead replaced by salafi“. As good quants, we decided it would be best if we could back up this hypothesis with data before trying to understand the shift.

Now, not-so-recently, Google started this service called “google trends” which gives a measure of the popularity of a particular word or phrase over the years, and allows us to compare the usage of various phrases. We used Google Trends to compare the usage of Wahhabi and Salafi and found this:

This graph clearly shows that by 2004 the word “Wahhabi” was already out of fashion and “Salafi” was much more widely used.

If you look at only the US, however, the situation is different. Though there was significant fluctuation, till about 2006, the usage of Wahhabi and Salafi was comparable. Then from 2006-07 onwards, the usage of “Salafi” pulled away much ahead of that of Wahhabi, and it has remained that way, in accordance with worldwide trends.

It would be interesting to analyze, however, the reasons for this shift in nomenclature.

Update
Pavan Srinath weighs in that “Wahhabi” can also be spelt as “Wahabi”. And that spelling is actually on the upswing:
http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en#q=wahabi%2C%20wahhabi%2C%20salafi&cmpt=q

In the US, though, both Wahhabi and Wahabi are on the decline:
http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en#q=wahabi,+wahhabi,+salafi&cmpt=q&geo=US

So it appears that what is on the decline is the spelling “Wahhabi” more than the word itself.

A Victory By Default for the Congress in Karnataka

Voters like to chase winners. Everybody wants their own MLA to belong to the winning party, for they perceive that the benefits to the constituency in that case are likely to be much greater. Some people vote by ideology. Others by caste. Many, however, just try to second-guess who the winner is, and vote for them.

A recent survey conducted by Daksh asked voters across Karnataka if they had voted for the winning candidate. A whopping 75% of the voters said they did so. In the 2008 Assembly Elections, the average vote share gained by a winning candidate was 43%. The graph here shows, constituency wise, the vote share of the winning party in the 2008 Elections and the number of survey respondents in the constituency who claimed to vote for the winner.

Source: The Daksh Survey of Karnataka MLAs and empoweringindia.org

Notice how in most constituencies, the proportion of survey respondents who have said they’ve voted for the winner is far higher than the vote share the winning candidate got in the elections. This can mean one of two things. One possibility is that the sample that Daksh used for their survey was heavily biased. However, given that the result is consistent across all constituencies, it is unlikely that they would have got a biased sample in all constituencies. The other possibility is that everybody likes to be associated with the winner.

In most elections, it is difficult to gauge who “everyone else” is voting for. People sometimes rely on opinion or exit polls, but they are usually based on small samples. This election is different. It was immediately preceded by elections to 200 odd urban local bodies all over Karnataka. All towns and cities in Karnataka went to the polls only a month or two back. While there are some cities where the local bodies have been hung, if you look across the state, the verdict is clear. And people are aware of that verdict.

Given the Congress’s strong performance in the recent urban local body elections, the marginal voter is likely to swing to the Congress. Media reports indicate that all is not well with the party and there is considerable bickering for tickets. However, the weight of the marginal votes is going to be enough to push the Congress comfortably over the line. The bickering for tickets can be looked at in another way – Congressmen know that their party is going to form the government, and are extra keen on riding a winning horse.

Political Parties in Karnataka

General consensus among pundits is that the Janata Dal (Secular) (JDS) is going to struggle to cross 50 seats in the forthcoming assembly elections. The general discourse is that they lack a presence outside of the Old Mysore region. However, you might remember that not so long ago, in 1994, the Janata Dal (which broke up in 1999, one of whose offshoots was the JDS) had an absolutely majority in the state assembly. So I thought it might be interesting to see where the JD was strong in 1994.

I decided to go back another decade, to the 1983 elections, and for all elections from 1983 to 2004 I’ve mapped out how each of the 3 principal parties in Karnataka performed. I’ve grouped all the Janata Parivar parties (Janata Party, Janata Dal, and their offshoots) and coloured them green. The Congress has been coloured blue while the BJP is saffron. Seats won by independents/others have been coloured in black.

Notice:

1. Before the Janata Dal split in 1999, the JD had a significant presence even in Bombay Karnataka, where it is now supposed to have absolutely no presence.
2. The growth of the BJP has been outward from the Mangalore-Udupi area. One needs to remember that the Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts are extremely diverse in terms of religion, so perhaps the Hindutva card works better there than elsewhere? Also, the coastal districts are where the RSS first set up its roots in Karnataka.
3. In 1999 and 2004, the BJP actually won some seats in the old Mysore region outside of Bangalore. In 2008, though, the BJP was decimated in this region. It is unlikely it will regain some base in this area in the coming election
4. The Congress won a whopping 178 seats in 1989. And what happened? Intense jockeying for the post of CM. Three CMs over the course of five years (Veerendra Patil, S Bangarappa and Veerappa Moily) followed by a humiliating loss in 1994 when the Congress came third!
5. The JD split in 1999 hit it badly. In most constituencies both the JD (U) and the JD(S) contested. That probably played into the hands of the Congress which won a simple majority. By 2004, the JD (U) was virtually non-existent in Karnataka, and the JD (S) managed to consolidate all the Janata votes and did well.
6. Even in 2004, you might notice that the BJP was virtually confined to the western half of Karnataka. In 2008, thanks to the efforts of the Reddy brothers, in addition to Western Karnataka they swept the regions in and around Bellary, which pushed them past the target. With the Reddys in jail and their right-hand-man B Sriramulu having formed his own party, the BJP won’t come close to a majority this time.

Unfortunately I haven’t been able to get my hands on the shapefiles of the delimited constituencies (2008 and later), so I’m unable to include the 2008 results in this chart. If any of you can supply me the shapefiles, or at least the constituency map of the new assembly constituencies, I’d be most grateful.