Sanjay Kumar

Suhas Palshikar

Sanjay Lodha

The general elections held in 2014 in India — the largest democracy in the world — to elect the 16th Lok Sabha brought in dramatic results. This important volume explains not only the startling victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) but also the equally surprising downfall of the Congress Party. It examines not why BJP won and the Congress lost, but why the scale of BJP’s victory and that of Congress’s defeat was so very different from the results in the years 2004 and 2009. The volume presents an in-depth analysis of the electoral results, state-wise studies, the factors leading up to these outcomes, and the road India has travelled since then. With contributions from India’s leading political scientists, psephologists, sociologists and political commentators, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of Indian politics, democracy and political parties, as well as South Asian studies.

The Resurgence of the Bharatiya Janata Party

Electoral Politics in India

Rajendra Vora

This volume examines how Indian democracy has survived the challenges posed by widespread illiteracy, poverty, secessionism and communalism—problems that have felled the fledgling democratic institutions of so many post-colonial societies. The contributors locate the reason for the resilience of Indian democracy in its history—that it was the product of a gradual evolution and not of a sudden imposition from above. The essays in the volume, however, show that despite having stood the test of time, Indian democracy is not a democracy in any substantive sense. The economic policies of successive governments since 1985 have been basically anti-people; rampant casteism, communalism, and the use of money and muscle power have infiltrated the body politic. Mass mobilization has been powered by hate, making it a feature more typical of a nascent neo-fascist state than of a democracy. The `substantialization of democracy’—proper representation and people’s participation in decision making—still remains a distant ideal.

Suhas Palshikar

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