Better employment opportunities, better health care, drinking water, better roads and public transport are among the top five priorities of voters when it comes to governance issues that play specific role in improving their living conditions, finds a survey conducted by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), an NGO working in the area of electoral and political reforms.
The survey, which covered 31 listed issues, was conducted between October 2018 and December 2018 in 534 Lok Sabha constituencies with 2,73,487 voters participating.
“Voters were asked to list their top five priorities. These voters’ priorities were further analysed in relation to the performance of the government on those issues as perceived by the voters,” the ADR survey said.
The five voters’ priorities at all India level were found to be better employment opportunities (46.80%), better health care (34.60%), drinking water (30.50%), better roads (28.34%) and better public transport (27.35%).
“Significance of better employment opportunities as voters’ highest priority increased by 56.67 percent from 30 percent (2017) to 47 percent (2018). Performance of government on this issue declined from 3.17 to 2.15 on scale of 5,” the study said.
The three main objectives of the survey were to identify voters’ priorities on specific governance issues; voters’ ratings of the government’s performance on those issues; and factors affecting voting behaviour.
“It is important to note that agricultural related governance issues featured predominantly in the all India top 10 voters’ priorities, e.g., availability of water for agriculture (26.40%) that was ranked sixth, agriculture loan availability (25.62%) that was ranked seventh, higher price realisation for farm products (25.41%) that was ranked eighth, and agriculture subsidy for seeds/fertilsers (25.06%) that was ranked ninth,” it said.