"Why India Votes: The results of a comparative ethnographic studyWhy India Votes: The results of a comparative ethnographic study"

For more details please contact vdvoffice(at)mmg.mpg.de.

‘Why India Votes’ is a big question in two senses. First, Indian voters make up one sixth of the world’s electorate, so their attitudes to elections really do matter to the political future of the planet, and their experience may prove helpful to understanding democracies, old and new, elsewhere. Second, in a polity that faces so many challenges to its own social and political cohesion, what the masses think about voting seems a vital indicator of how India may survive and evolve in the future. Skeptics are right to say that elections alone do not a true democracy make, but India’s problems will surely be still greater if her people lose faith in the electoral process.