Fourth general election in India

The volume originally formed a special number of the Political Science Review, a quarterly journal of the department, which is being released in book form to attract a wider reading public. The planning of the volume started about six months before the advent of general elections when a thematic outline was evolved and communicated to prospective writers both in India and abroad. The response to our invitation fortunately has been more generous than what we had hoped for. Our gratitude to the contributors knows no bounds and we, in fact, shine only in their reflected glory.

The underlying assumption in the planning of the volume has been that election politics when viewed on the continuum of political development in the life story of a political system is much more comprehensive than voting behaviour which is the end product but certainly not the be-all and end-all of election politics. This assumption is more relevant in developing countries like India where politics is not independent of the infra-structural pulls and pressures as it is in developed countries, though even there, more often than not, the autonomy of politics has tended to appear more a myth than a reality. This digression apart, the point of emphasis here is that the volume has been so planned as to cover election politics on the eve of and through the fourth general election in all its dimensions and ramifications. The study of voting behaviour has not been viewed here as an isolated and sporadic phenomenon but as organically linked with the democratic politics of the country in general and its election politics in particular. Thus the volume on fourth general election in India offers a study of Indian political system in action through the specific, sharp and illuminating focus of the fourth general election.