Jobs, healthcare, drinking water top priorities for voters: Survey

Better employment opportunities, better healthcare and drinking water are the top priorities for the voters at the all-India level, as per a survey by the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR).

According to the All India Survey 2018, in all the 10 areas that were the priority for the voters, the government’s rating was “below average”.

“The significance of better employment opportunities as voters’ highest priority has increased by 56.67 per cent from 30 per cent in 2017 to 47 per cent in 2018. At the same time, the performance of the government on this issue declined from 3.17 to 2.15 on a scale of five,” the ADR survey noted.

The three main objectives of the ADR survey were to identify voters’ priorities on specific governance issues, voters ratings of the government’s performance on those issues, and factors affecting the voting behaviour.

According to the survey, better employment opportunities (46.80 per cent), better healthcare (34.60 per cent) and drinking water (30.50 per cent) were the top three priorities of the voters at the all-India level,

It is followed by better roads (28.34 per cent) and better public transport (27.35 per cent) at the fourth and the fifth place, respectively.

Agriculture-related governance issues also featured predominantly in the top 10 voters’ priorities at a time several parts of the country have been witnessing farm distress.

For instance, availability of water for agriculture (26.40 per cent) was ranked sixth, agriculture loan availability (25.62 per cent) ranked seventh, higher price realisation for farm products (25.41 per cent) ranked eighth, and agriculture subsidy for seeds/fertilisers (25.06 per cent) ranked ninth.

Better law-and-order situation was the 10th governance-related issue in the survey.

The survey was conducted between October -December last year, covering 534 Lok Sabha constituencies with 2,73,487 voters, spread among various demographics, participating in the exercise.

“Amongst the 32 states and UTs (Union Territories) that were surveyed, in 29 of them, voters have given below average ratings to the government for its performance on all top 3 voters’ priorities at the state level. This is with the exception of Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, and Puducherry,” the findings of the survey noted.

As per All India Survey 2018, 75.11 per cent voters disclosed that the chief ministerial candidate was the most important reason behind voting for a particular candidate, followed by candidate’s party (71.32 per cent) and the candidate (68.03 per cent) himself/herself.