-Livemint.com Politics in India has been based on caste in recent decades. But a rising middle class and increasing inequality within caste groups is paving the way for a class-based faultline. One cliché looms large in every election campaign in India: that caste politics may finally give way to class politics. But as counting begins on the day of the election verdict, caste subsumes every other factor, even in serious analyses of...
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Employment, finally an election issue -Santosh Mehrotra and JK Parida
-The Hindu Several myths persist about job creation, which can misguide policymaking Jobs are rarely far from the minds of citizenry. Politicians woke up to this fact in the run-up to the Bihar Assembly elections. It is for the first time that unemployment has become a big issue in an election. This is not surprising. Rising unemployment The economy had been slowing for nine quarters prior to the COVID-19 outbreak. Before the 2019 Lok...
More »Lesson from Bihar: Suffering Does Not Make People Shift Party Loyalties -Ajaz Ashraf
-Newsclick.in The results show how strong the pull of caste identity is. Nothing else explains why JD-U’s vote share did not shrink disastrously. The Bihar Assembly elections turned out to be a breathlessly close race, with the National Democratic Alliance pipping the Mahagathbandhan or Grand Alliance to the post. Yet the award for man of the match must go to Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav, who took on the combined might...
More »Shaibal Gupta, social scientist at Asian Development Research Institute, spoke to Down to Earth on Bihar polls
-Down to Earth Shaibal Gupta, social scientist at Asian Development Research Institute, spoke to DTE on Bihar polls and its national importance It is D-day after the first election in India amid the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. The process of counting the votes cast in the Bihar Assembly elections started November 10, 2020 morning. But an increased number of electronic voting machines have slowed the process down and only about a...
More »Piped Dream -Moumita Chaudhuri
-The Telegraph With the Assembly elections approaching, water has again become a promise. Is it indeed possible to ensure every household in the state gets clean piped water supply within the next four years? Nothing can be more shameful if a government that has been in power for 18 years cannot even provide basics like clean drinking water.” So said Union home minister Amit Shah in 2018, when he was in Odisha...
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