Indian Elections

Internet usage has shown drastic growth in the initial half of the year 2015 in India. The user base has increased over 354 million and with this India has become the top second country after China in terms of internet usage. Facebook is the prime social networking site which is used by 96% of urban users, followed by Google Plus (61%), Twitter (43%) and LinkedIn (24%). This extensive use of social media by the public had attracted the attention of the politicians to use it for election campaigns and has given researchers a reason to find out how politicians are engaging the public through this platform. Influence of Social media on the electorate has been proved from its successful use in the US presidential election in 2008 and by political parties in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections in India. This paper intends to explore the use of social media and its effectiveness in political elections through an extensive literature review. Social media has become an effective tool for political engagement and political participation as it is a low cost media as compared to traditional media. The low cost of this media has made it one of the main source to get information for advanced analysis and in-depth understanding of the electoral process. This paper will provide an insight to politicians, political analysts, journalists and electoral candidates regarding social media usage. The paper will also present a future research agenda to study how political parties can benefit from use of social media and change their strategies to engage workers and the voters.

The result of state elections 2022 reveals that the BJP riding high on pro-incumbency wave retained power in UP, Uttarakhand and Manipur and emerged as the largest party in Goa, while AAP wrested power from the Congress in Punjab. The narrative of BJP winning state elections primarily due to communal polarization is an overstatement, as its victory in state elections prove that electorate form voting decisions based on good governance and populist policies rather than rhetoric of communal polarization. The victory of AAP in Punjab is a harbinger of its emergence in national politics and it shall no longer contain its political agenda on regional concerns but emerge as a viable alternative. The failure of Congress to retain power in Punjab and win Goa has further shrunk its stature and it seems to be entering the final orbit of decline with the danger of fading into political irrelevance. The huge victory of the BJP in UP authenticates the strengthening of Modi’s vote fetching potential and dominance of the saffron party system. UP is a representative sample of the Hindi heartland states and the force multiplication of Modi wave in ensuring saffron victory in four states vindicates its routinization in winning elections. The state mandates reaffirms that the dominance of BJP is snowballing and it will be a front-runner in Lok Sabha elections 2024.

India has entered the new Millennium without the aura of the much-touted millennium. Indian democracy is shallower and hollower now than a decade ago. If India has to develop into a full-blown democracy, instead of merely gloating over sustaining democracy as its greatest achievement, India ought to strengthen its democratic structures and institutions and work overtime to offer, among other things, clean, efficient, secular and transparent and corruption-free governance; rapid expansion of civil space for rapid secularisation and democratisation of state and society with secular public institutions mediating between both; equip and energise the judiciary for expeditious justice delivery, especially for the masses who cannot afford to spend and cannot afford to wait; and protect and uplift the weaker sections from poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, and social oppression. As the nation has been caught between the two evils Congress and the BJP, making the hapless masses forlorn, team...

The assembly election in UP is the political talk of the town due to the mammoth magnitude of balloting and prime significance of its timing in the 5 year national election cycle of India. It is generally termed as midterm referendum of the central government or the semi-final election of political party (ies) in power, an electoral wind wane that points the direction of future politics. The election is crucial, but its excessive media coverage and political importance based on the belief that the road to Delhi passes through UP is exaggerated. The myth surrounding this hype has been debunked long ago, as the Congress did not have prominent electoral footprints in the state during the UPA government in India between 2004 and 2014. CM Yogi Adityanath and Akhilesh Yadav sounded the poll bugle by engaging in slugfest of communal chest thumping for electoral one-upmanship and mediatized battle of engineering defections from each other’s party to win the narrative. Political hysteria and rhetorical gimmicks, which are the new hallmarks of electoral politics, reaches its crescendo in UP, as elections have become highly competitive due to caste-communities coalitional quest for identity and self-assertiveness for inclusive power sharing.

‘Turncoat Politics’ and ‘Political Horse-Trading’ have been the key features of electoral politics in Goa and Manipur due to fractured mandates and political fluidity. The opinion polls and ground reports suggests that the BJP has an edge in Manipur and lagging behind in Goa, but it can dramatically change on the election day due to high electoral volatility and party switching. However, the BJP may continue to dominate politics in Goa and Manipur due to the absence of party loyalties of elected representatives and its political legacy of backdoor post poll negotiations and government formations in these states.

Chapter from India Elections 2014 - First Reflections. Eds: Einar Thorsen and Chindu Sreedharan. Centre for the Study of Journalism, Culture and Community, Bournemouth University, United Kingdom (2015).

The chapter compares the political communication approaches of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Indian National Congress, with particular attention to the use of computer-mediated communication by the BJP, which was the victorious party in the 2014, Indian General Election.

The role of popular media in furthering the politics of the day cannot possibly be underestimated. Robin Jeffrey analyses the role that technology has played in Indian elections historically and explores the potential of new digital media powered by 4G enabled phones in elections today.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has emerged the victor in both Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat state Legislative Assembly elections. It is now important for both the main contestants, Congress and BJP, to introspect what have gone right in the victory and what do the losses imply. Equally, it is important for the nation to introspect about an election that was characterized as the prelude to 2019 general election, Gujarat particularly had prestige attached to it for being the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Himachal Pradesh The BJP predictably won in Himachal Pradesh – 44 seats out of 68, conceding only 21 to Congress and 3 to others – following the established alternation model, which is good for any democracy. The margin, however, was humiliating for the Congress. The Congress fell to anti-incumbency factor and is comprehensively beaten. While it needs to introspect the dissatisfaction amongst its support bases, it is the leadership and organisational factors that deserves the party's attention. Both are indeed state-specific as well as countrywide phenomena, and take a while to build up. BJP clearly has an edge in both. Congress could not find an alternative younger leader to Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, whose regime was steeped in corruption charges, to galvanize the party. Though backed by the Parivar's organisational strength, BJP too appeared edgy about Prem Kumar Dhumal, the aging leader who has been twice Chief Minister of the state, before finally accepting him to lead the party. His losing the election could also indicate some rift within the party, though it has not damaged its prospects. Gujarat However, it was in Gujarat that the stakes were much higher for both the BJP and the Congress. Let us remember, Gujarat heralded the rise of the current leader of the party, Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The state also emerged as the laboratory of Hindutva, beyond Lal Krishna Advani's truck with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the first experiment with the Hindutva with Ayodhya as the crucible and Advani's rath yatra, ably coordinated and organised by his trusted disciple (later displacer) Narendra Modi. He rewarded him with the Chief Minister's chair in 2001, when Keshubhai Patel went out of favour. Modi ably mixed Hindutva with Vikas (development) to consolidate himself and the party despite the setback of 2002.

Politics and election in India always remain in the limelight. The election season has its own fascination and takes a grand shape particularly in
Indian context. Electorate votes for their choice of candidate who in turn will represent them in the Legislature. Post-election observation shows
that there is a considerable decline in fulfilling the election campaign promises by an elected representative. ECI's NOTA initiative with proposed RTR law has power to turn the tide in public favor. All these inevitable changes hold the key to reform the election process and to revolutionize the governance mechanism in India.

This case study focuses on the experience of elections in India during the Covid-19 pandemic, specifically between March 2020 and July 2021. It presents a disaggregated account of the parliamentary (national), assembly (regional) and local government elections that were held during this period, highlighting the organizational challenges, the institutional innovations and the implementation issues confronting these elections during Covid-19.
The aim of the case study is to highlight the tensions inherent in conducting elections during natural disasters that, on the one hand, severely compromise opportunities for deliberation, contestation, participation and election management, and, on the other hand, pose the danger of a break in institutional certainty of democratic processes (James and Alihodzic 2020). While both the arguments in favour of and against conducting elections
have a strong democratic basis, it is undeniable that electoral integrity suffers greatly under such conditions. As this case study reveals, disasters magnify the effort required to conduct free, fair and safe elections. Although the electoral administration in India formulated comprehensive and detailed guidelines on prevention measures, these were only partially successful in preventing the elections from becoming conduits for transmission of Covid-19. The case study discusses the parliamentary and indirect legislative elections, followed by state assembly elections and local government elections. Each section presents the underlying context for the elections and the strategies adopted by the election management bodies, and highlights the implementation problems and the tension between democratic processes and electoral integrity. The detailed discussion on the state assembly elections is arranged chronologically, using the framework of ‘pre-election’, ‘during the election’ and ‘after the election’, which has been used to inform the wider discussion on elections and electoral integrity. In conclusion, the case study draws out the centrality of elections in Indian polity where elections were conducted despite the surge in Covid-19 cases. The elections reaffirm the perception of India as a weak–strong state, capable of holding elections but incapable of implementing the guidelines regarding Covid-19. Importantly, the subnational variations in election organization that existed suggest that local-level innovations and institutional capacity may have a crucial role to play in negotiating democracy during disasters. The case study ends with some discussion on the relationship between elections and disasters, and how democratic practices are shaped by their context.

The results of the sixteenth general elections, examined within the context of India’s recent political history, suggest that India is witness to an unprecedented backlash against its inherently conservative development policies and programs. And Modi knows this well – he rarely brought up the state versus the market debate, let alone taking sides, during the long-winded election campaign. As a political commentator has argued, “For all his brilliance and innovation, Modi did not enlighten the nation about his ‘agenda’; he simply harnessed the anti-Congress mood.”

More importantly, careful analyses of the election campaign show that in key states, Modi’s victory is owed to a meticulous planning “constituency by constituency, candidate by candidate, and caste by caste.”

The elections in UP, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur and Goa are primarily a formal process for selecting a party or alliance based on voters feedback, but it will also provide a collateral assessment of the ideological dominance of Modi 'wave' in competitive politics. The term ‘wave’ means an electoral phenomenon that leads to major gains or losses for a political party saddled in power based on pro or anti-incumbency sentiments of the electorate. Its usage changed in General Elections 2014, phrased as ‘Modi’ wave, a decisive leader, who can solve the multiple crisis plaguing the country. Modi continues to be people’s first choice as India’s Prime Minister, a vindication of his magnetic personality transcending the party organization. His leadership has stood the test of time and the charismatic momentum still seems formidable in perpetuating single saffron party dominance. Modi’s vote mobilization potentiality is an important variable in the state elections and results, particularly of UP that has been the crucible of Modi wave, will determine its force multiplier effect in winning future elections.

This paper explores the tradition of billboard and poster campaigns in Indian elections as a political and propagandistic medium, analyzes the social, cultural and artistic traditions of India that are reflected through them, and demonstrates the way in which their pre-eminence in Indian political life represents a unique tradition of mass communication that is grounded in the nation’s culture and its socio-political development.