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Mainstream, VOL L, No 1, December 24, 2011 (Annual 2011)

Valuable Addition to Literature on Election Studies

Tuesday 27 December 2011, by Ranbir Singh

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BOOK REVIEW

India: 2009 Elections—Coalition Politics, Party Competition and Congress Continuity by Paul Wallace and Ramashray Roy (ed.); Sage Publications, New Delhi; 2011; pages XVIII+412; Price Rs 995.

This book is a continuation of the earlier election studies—Indian Politics and the 1998 Elections: Regionalisation, Hindutva and State Politics (1999); India’s 1999 Elections and the 20th Century Politics (2003), India’s 2004 Elections: Grassroots and National Perspectives (2007)—which have been edited by two well-known specialists on Indian politics, Paul Wallace (Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Missouri, Columbia, USA) and Ramashray Roy (Former Director of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi), and published by Sage Publications, New Delhi.

Undoubtedly, as claimed by the editors in its Preface, “Together, the four volumes—beginning with the 1998 elections—provide an extended presentation and analysis of national and State politics in scope and depth that is without parallel in Indian scholarship.” The volume being reviewed here has been divided into two parts: ‘Thematic Studies’ and ‘Analytical State Studies’. The Thematic Studies include the following insightful articles by outstanding scholars:

‘Introduction: Political Stability and Gover-nance Coherence’; ‘Regional Base and National Dream: Alliance Formation, 2009 National Election’; ‘Coalition Politics: Withering of National-Regional Ideological Position’; ‘Region, Represen-tation and National Cohesion: Public Space in India’; ‘Federalism, Party System and Structural Changes in India’; ‘Gender Discourse in Elections: Constructing a Constituency’; and ‘The BSP in 2009: Still Making Progress, but only as a Dalit Party’.
The Analytical Studies include contributions of equally distinguished social scientists and a mediapersons; those have been divided into three sections:

(A) One Favoured (dominant) Party System (Gujarat and West Bengal); (B) Alternative Two-Party System (Rajasthan Kerala, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh); and (C) Multi-party States (Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir and Northeast India). Among these those of Ghan-shyam Shah, Raghvendra Keshavarao Hebsur and Praveen Krishna Swami are excellent. Others are good but do not squarely fit in the above category.

On the whole, this edited book is superb. But it is rather difficult for the reviewer to fully agree with the contention of Paul Wallace that ‘India’s’ electorate emphasised political stability and governance coherence in the 15th National Elections in 2009 because the outcome of these elections was determined not only by the perceptions of the voters regarding the performance of UPA (I) 2004-2009 but also by their views on the nature of governance in various States’. However, one cannot disagree with his view that ‘the Congress Party gambled successfully on a minimum rather than a maximum winning coalition’. Besides, it has also to be recognised that Paul Wallace has given a very useful analysis of the pre- and post-election scenarios and also provided a succinct summary of various articles in the Introduction of the book.

Nevertheless, this edited volume deserves to be acknowledged as a very valuable addition to the literature on election studies in India. It deserves to be read by all those political scientists, mediapersons and political leaders who are interested in understanding the nature of Indian politics in general and that of the State politics in particular. The editors and publishers must be complimented for producing this useful and elegant volume which is available at an affordable price.

Prof Ranbir Singh is a former Chairman of the Political Science Department, Dean of Social Sciences and Dean of Academic Affairs, Kurukshetra University.

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