Panel Description: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) swept to power in the 2014 national election. The NDA performed particularly well in Bihar, winning 172 out of 243 assembly constituency segments in 2014. In the 2015 Bihar state election, just 18 months later, the NDA won only 58 assembly constituencies. What explains this precipitous drop in the NDA’s popularity in such a short time? Combining data analysis, perspectives from the ground, and views from within political parties, this panel seeks to provide an answer to this question. The panelists will also discuss larger narratives emerging from this historic election and their implications for politics across India.
Speakers:
Neelanjan Sircar
Neelanjan Sircar is based at the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) in Delhi. His research interests include voting behaviour in India, as well as statistical methods for analyzing political data. With colleagues Bhanu Joshi and Ashish Ranjan, Neelanjan wrote a series of articles in The Hindu, and longer analyses with CPR, while conducting qualitative field research during the election in Bihar. He received Bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics and Economics from UC Berkeley in 2003, and a PhD in Political Science from Columbia University in 2014.
Ghanshyam Tiwari
Ghanshyam Tiwari, spokesperson JD(U), holds an MBA from Kellogg School of Management, an MPA from Harvard Kennedy School and BE in Electrical Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Surathkal. He is passionate about driving social change through better public leadership, governance and technology. He has worked in chip design, corporate strategy, development policy, and public leadership in USA and India over 15 years for Texas Instruments and Intel, McKinsey & Co., London School of Economics, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Janata Dal (United) in Bihar. More recently, he worked on public campaigns in education, skill development and culture.
Bhanu Joshi
Bhanu Joshi is a research associate at CPR. His current research focuses on governance issues, particularly around politics and institutions of urban areas. His work has also looked at laws governing urban areas and its interaction with the 74th Constitutional Amendment, 1992 (decentralisation act). Bhanu is also interested in understanding electoral politics in India – the recently concluded Bihar elections was his first interaction in this field.