Tag: Lok Sabha

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Reuters/Babu
Photo: A supporter of India’s main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, wears a mask depicting party leader Narendra Modi before a campaign rally in Chennai, April 13, 2014. Reuters/Babu

To win an Indian election, a political party must win a majority of seats in the lower house of parliament, or Lok Sabha. Since there are 543 seats in the Lok Sabha, this majority would amount to at least 272 seats.

Narendra Modi, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s candidate for prime minister, is the current frontrunner in the Indian elections and is widely believed to be the country’s next leader. The ultimate success of the “Modi wave” rippling through India, however, depends on this arithmetic equation within the Lok Sabha. “Most polls have shown Modi’s BJP winning the largest number of seats while falling short of the 272 needed for a majority when election results are announced May 16,” Bibhudatta Pradhan writes in Bloomberg.

To actually become the country’s next prime minister, Modi must band together with other political parties willing to offer him support so he can control the number of seats he needs to succeed. Continue reading…

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Mukulika Banerjee.
Mukulika Banerjee. Credit Courtesy of Sonia Paul

Mukulika Banerjee. Courtesy of Sonia Paul“Voting in elections is considered sacrosanct by a large majority of Indians,” Mukulika Banerjee writes in the introduction to her new book, “Why India Votes.” That observation forms the backbone of the anthropology professor’s work, an ethnographic study of 12 sites in India during the 2009 general elections, which explores the motivations and opinions of Indian voters on a range of issues related to the electoral process.

 As part of the Jaipur Literature Festival’s theme “Democracy Dialogues,” Dr. Banerjee, who is the associate professor of social anthropology at the London School of Economics, participated in several discussions on India’s social and political evolution. While conversations and questions during the panels often zeroed in on this year’s political players like Narendra Modi, Rahul Gandhi and the Aam Aadmi Party, India Ink spoke with Dr. Banerjee about the other factors motivating voter turnout, and why the act of voting is so meaningful for the majority of Indians. 

Q.

Why India votes is a huge political question, but your book is actually an anthropological book and an ethnography. What is it about ethnography that lends itself useful to the study of politics?

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