The Resistance of Regionalism: BJP’s Limitations and the Resilience of State Parties
Résumé
The 16th Indian general elections have been extolled as a resounding success: more than 815 million voters were called to the ballot and 66 percent of them exercised their franchise, an all-time high in India. The 2009 general elections' turnout was 58 percent, and the previous record, 64 percent in 1984, also occurred in exceptional circumstances, in the wake of Mrs Gandhi's assassination. The outcome of the 2014 elections has also been hailed as historic, or a landmark in Indian politics, as for the first time in the last 30 years, a non-Congress party succeeded in obtaining a single majority of seats in the Lok Sabha on its own. The performance is all the more remarkable in that national politics in India has been marked by an intense fragmentation of both the party system and the electorate...