In his now famous speech to budding police officers in Hyderabad on how civil society groups can be subverted, the National Security Adviser, Ajit Kumar Doval, widely regarded as the third most important official in the security establishment, significantly said: “The quintessence of democracy does not lie in the ballot box … it lies in the […]
“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 […]
A Case Study A total of 1698 political parties are registered with the Election Commission of India, out of which only 464 parties contested the Lok Sabha 2014 elections. So, the important question is ‘why are there so many parties registered with the ECI when three-fourth of them do not even participate in elections, the […]