Modi’s  Carefree Attitude Annoys Voters

Sareeka Tewari

The growing disenchantment with the government seems to be linked to a decline in consumer sentiment witnessed over the past couple of years.

Data from consumer confidence surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) show that consumer sentiments have been on the decline since 2016. RBI consumer sentiment survey is based exclusively on an urban sample of 5,000 respondents, and hence fails to capture the sentiments in rural India

The latest poll conducted in May 2018 showed that if snap Lok Sabha elections were to be held today, only 34% of people would prefer Narendra Modi to return as Prime Minister, down from 37% in January and 44% a year ago. The proportion of people choosing Rahul Gandhi as their preferred Prime Minister has risen 15 percentage points over the past year to 24%, the survey data

Narendra Modi continues to remain the most popular leader in the country, his approval ratings seem to be on a decline as anti-incumbency grows.

That’s the key message from successive rounds of “Mood of the Nation” surveys —large-scale, nationally representative surveys conducted by Lokniti-CSDS since mid-2017.

One of the key reasons behind Modi’s declining approval ratings appears to be rising discontent with the economic performance of the Modi government. A majority of people now believe that the government has failed to deliver on its election promise of “achhe din” or better days.