Democracy

This article highlights the Supreme Court's ruling against the 'Electoral Bonds' scheme, exposing the pervasive issue of unaccounted political funding in India. It calls for urgent reforms to ensure transparency, accountability, and equity in political funding to curb corruption and promote fair democratic processes.

This article explores the role of the Indian diaspora in India's elections, as they mobilize support for political parties and advocate for greater representation.

How India navigates the many competing forces and interests at play in the social media landscape will be critical in determining the future and health of its democracy.

Given the steep rise in their participation in elections, women have become a sought after constituency for those running for power.

As India, the world’s largest democracy, heads towards its 2024 general elections, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under the leadership of Narendra Modi seeks another five year term amidst collective mobilisation by opposition forces.

India’s northeast has had a chequered history of youth movements and has been home to some of the recent strong pro-democracy movements in the country. Being young in India’s northeast necessitates acts of social interventions of various kinds. In this conversation, Dr. Kaustubh Deka and Dr. Soibam Haripriya reflect on the locality of youth movements and the long history of the culture of protest in the region, as well as its larger resonance.

The prose of Indian poet Haripriya Soibam describes youth's struggle to preserve and promote democracy. Read her five poems for "Young voices on the rise - Youth and democracy in the Asia-Pacific region".

In this article, the authors explain that the recent amendments to India’s citizenship law, and the processes for listing Indian residents and Indian citizens in national registers together constitute an unprecedented threat to India’s secular democratic constitution. It explains that this is the first time a legal regime is being established which differentiates based on religious identity, which strikes at the heart of the humanist and inclusive framework of the Indian constitution.

The CAA is not the first and by no means will be the last attempt to further the agenda of Hindu Rashtra. One can anticipate many such moves meant to keep the hatred against Muslims simmering. However, the divisive politics will only hurtle India onto the treacherous road of relentless anxiety, uncertainty and injustice, exposing million of its own citizens against the vagaries of statelessness.