Authors: Advocate Shivani Kapoor, former program lead and manager at ADR, and Ms Shelly Mahajan (Program and Research Manager (Political Party Watch) at ADR) Improving the quality of Indian democracy requires addressing several issues around political finance. In December 2025 in Doha, the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) adopted Resolution 11/7, placing transparency of […]
Author: Shelly Mahajan
Beyond Reservation: What Still Keeps Women out of Electoral Politics?
ADR partnered with Public Policy India for its first research report, The State of Policy in India Report, 2026. Ms Shelly Mahajan (Program and Research Manager (Political Party Watch) at ADR) authored an essay on “Beyond Reservation: What Still Keeps Women out of Electoral Politics?”. Link of the full research paper: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1B1wof7qKT7A4-DxwZhGt0A70w4moy17k
AI and Elections in India | A need for better regulations
AI risks distorting information but also holds untapped potential to improve electoral campaigns and processes. To this end, prebunking must be used by all stakeholders Bihar’s political landscape is gradually heating up in the wake of the upcoming Assembly polls with political parties crafting campaigns to woo voters. The campaigns will soon be dominated by artificial intelligence […]
Elections | Digital spends on advertisements lack transparency
Like traditional campaign spending, there is an uneven level-playing field in the online spending space as well Since 2014, digital media platforms have become a ubiquitous part of Indian election campaigns. The use of social media for election campaigning intensified in the 2024 general elections with the rampant use of generative AI for campaign messaging. Today, […]
Emerging Trends in Electoral Behaviour: Why Money, Muscle Power Reign Supreme
The All India Survey on Governance Issues and Voting Behaviour 2018 released by ADR last year brought out some interesting findings. 36.67% of voters (out of more than 250,000 respondents) felt that people vote for candidates with criminal antecedents because they are unaware of his/her criminal records. 35.89% voters are also willing to vote for […]
Continuing Trend of Crime and Money in Electoral Politics
“The voter [in India] is subject to the law of the two ‘Ms’, money and muscle.” – Christophe Jaffrelot (2002) I sometimes wonder whether we can ever hope to realise the aspirations of our freedom fighters, who sacrificed so much to gain independence from colonial rule. Sadly, foreign domination has been replaced in some measure […]