Electoral Politics in India; Changing Landscape

A changing landscape is more than an election study. It uses the 1989 and 1991 Lok Sabha polls to chart the contours of political India in the 1990s. Through properly situating the electoral process as a dynamic element within the larger political universe, this volume attempts to explain both the comparative resilience of the Indian political system, and why that system is today under challenge as never before..

General elections provide illuminating snapshots of a nation in flux and affords important insights into the functioning of the political system. The democratic process inducts into the political arenal newly mobilised groups, revives dormant conflicts, helps create political alignments out of a temporary convergence of interest and focuses attention on issues ranging between material welfare and national identity.

The treatment of the topics covered from Bofors and Ram Janmabhoomi to terrorism and the Sarkaria Commission relates these issues to the major trends seen to emerge out of the 1989 elections, trends manifested even more clearly in 1991. Foremost among these are the shift from Ione-party dominance to a pluralist situation in which no party commands a national majority, distinct and contrasting patterns of regional and state politics, the persistence of centrist forces in the electoral arena and the rise of identity as a salient political issue..

Most of the papers included here were presented at an international conference on national and state politics in India organised in 1990 by the Politics Department and the Centre for Indian Studies, Hull University and the Centre for South Asian Studies. Cambridge. Among the distinguished contributors are Susanne and Lloyd Rudolph, Ashis Nandy. David Butler, Bharat Wariawalla and V.B. Singh.