Cash transfers fundamentally alter the relationship between the state and the voter. They create a one-way flow — the government gives, the citizen receives. Gratitude begins to substitute accountability. After years of delay, Mumbai is finally headed for a municipal election. For nearly half a decade, India’s richest city has been governed not by elected […]
– An article by Maj Gen Anil Verma (Retd) (Head of ADR) and Ms Shelly Mahajan (Program and Research Manager (Political Party Watch) at ADR) There is a need for intervention to ensure healthy electoral competition and to diversify the sources of political funding. Otherwise, it is always the citizens at large who end up […]
Bihar’s pre-poll handouts were part of a political pattern in India. So what do cash transfers mean for price stability, welfare outcomes and fiscal management? Conditional cash transfers are found to work, but a universal basic income (UBI) deserves consideration too. What happens when a helicopter drops a large amount of cash on a local […]
Once a constitutional safeguard, the ECI now risks enabling the erosion of India’s democratic norms through partisanship and opacity. The Election Commission of India (ECI) was set up on January 25, 1950, one day before the country became a Republic. So, historically, the ECI predates the Republic of India, which is an important factoid that […]
This was interviewed by Herjinder. “Are we to believe that 22–25 lakh people died in just six months, and another 37 lakh left?” The Election Commission of India’s month-long charade of ‘fixing’ the voter rolls of Bihar — an exercise now better known as the ‘Special Intensive Revision’ — has reached its first big milestone. […]
24 जून के नोटिफिकेशन में लिखा है कि जो लोग 1 जनवरी, 2003 से पहले मतदाता सूची में थे, उन्हें भारत का नागरिक माना जाएगा। यानी इसके बाद के लोग नागरिक नहीं माने जाएंगे! नागरिक ना मानना बहुत बड़ी बात है। सुप्रीम कोर्ट ने 10 जुलाई की सुनवाई में कहा भी था कि आप नागरिकता […]
Expecting uneducated migrants to fill and upload online forms to enroll as voters is a flight of fancy. The Election Commission still has time to take corrective steps A correct and up-to-date electoral roll is sine qua non for a free and fair election in a democracy. However, given the size, diversity, and geographical dispersion of population […]
According to a full-page advertisement issued by the Bihar CEO on July 5, voters in Bihar could submit their Enumeration Forms (EFs) by July 25. The article was originally published in The Tribune.
