The Algebra of Warfare-Welfare : A Long View of India's 2014 Election

The Algebra of Warfare-Welfare develops a distinct political anthropology-sociology of democracy in India and beyond. It advances an original argument to understand electoral democracy as an algebra of warfare-welfare beyond immediacy and cold statistics. It makes (non) human lives - lived, unlived or unlivable - central to our understanding of democracy. Examining the momentous 2014 elections by analyzing development, gurus, terrorism, charisma, media, nationalism, rumour, truth, corruption, religion, regionalism, polarization, space, vote-bank, castes, manifestos, it brings together scholars to open up space for new thinking.

This volume explores how the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) won the 2014 Parliamentary elections with such an unprecedented majority, and what that victory means for politics in general and Indian politics in particular. It opens up space for new theoretical and methodological reflections on electoral democracy, critically taking on such salient issues as development, terrorism, charisma, media, new mechanisms of mobilization, nationalism, rumour, religion, regionalism, polarisation, space, Muslim vote, and caste. This volume is distinct in its ability to focus squarely on the empirical acts of voting. It sociologically and historically examines the enduring as well as changing institutional, social, political, and cultural landscapes in which voting takes place. Unlike most other studies on elections in India, this book puts human subjectivity at the centre of election studies. The anthropological-sociological perspective the volume places before readers draws on political-social theory whereby the volume also examine the larger and changing contours of modernity, democracy and elections being its key faces. As such the volume situates the 2014 elections in relation to changing nature and forms of elections and democracy globally, in particular in conversation with those in the democratic nation-states in the West.