Election Atlas Of India - A first of its kind Election Atlas of India depicts a journey of parliamentary elections from 1st Lok Sabha in 1952 to the 16th Lok Sabha in 2014 (Updated till Oct 2017). Know more at: https://goo.gl/Gr7M4s

Ever since the Congress system finally collapsed and the post-Congress polity emerged in 1989, state has arisen as the most crucial terrain at which electoral outcomes are shaped. This book presents analyses of electoral politics in 24 states of India during the period 2008-2013. This period is of great interest because in the post-2004 period, Congress started adapting itself to the compulsions of the post-Congress polity and survive as one of the competitors in electoral politics. In a sense, the period under study here is the period of a stable post-Congress polity. Apart from the parliamentary election of 2009 that brought the Congress-led UPA back to power with an increased strength of the Congress party, this period also witnessed assembly elections in each of the states discussed here. The chapters look both at the Parliamentary election of 2009 and the Assembly election from each state to investigate how the two impact each other and what broader patterns emerge from their interaction. While the all-India picture of competitive politics presented the picture of routineness of electoral competition, many states threw up characteristics of a much more fluid competitive politics. This volume brings out this complex pattern of electoral politics at the state level and seeks to contribute to our understanding of state level political processes by using the rich data set of post-election surveys done by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi over the years.

This Is Virtually A Handbook Of Information For All Political Parties And A Useful Book For Political Scientists, Scholars, Teachers And Students Of Political Science As Well As Modern Indian History.

Publisher Description

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.

Secrecy of the ballot

Divided We Govern investigates the rise and fall of the broader parliamentary left in modern Indian democracy, and the dynamics of national coalition governments. Since the 1970s, socialist, communist and regional parties in India have sought to forge a progressive 'third force'. Most scholars typically dismiss its principal manifestations -- the Janata Party, National Front and United Front -- as inherently opportunistic coalitions of power-seeking politicians. Sanjay Ruparelia provides a fine-grained analytic narrative to challenge this prevailing wisdom. Employing a variety of methods and resources, including the rare confidential testimonies of key political actors, Ruparelia demonstrates how the politics of each governing coalition, despite their self-evident flaws and short-lived tenures, revealed the outlines of a distinctive national vision. His fresh analysis of the politics of coalition in India also yields wider theoretical insights. Most studies fail to question or explain how these multiparty governments actually functioned. Hence they overstate the stability of and polarity between multiple political motivations, Ruparelia contends, discounting internal party debates over whether to share power, with whom and to what extent, and how. In such circumstances, the strategies, tactics and choices of actors become especially significant. The pursuit of power in a highly regionalized federal parliamentary democracy such as India creates incentives to forge national coalition governments, yet paradoxically decreases their chances of surviving. Ultimately, the failure of socialists and communists to judge their real historical possibilities at key junctures led to the decline of the broader Indian left.