Any honest assessment of elections in India would conclude that they are now largely farcical. However, many dedicated progressive, centrist, and leftist voices continue to blame the opposition for its alleged failure to develop winning election strategies. Despite India’s rich and long history of people’s movements, it would seem that no solution to the present conundrum is forthcoming from the country’s civil society except blaming the political class.
What the situation urgently demands is not election strategies, but strategies on how to re-establish a robust election process in a country that is on the road to becoming like Russia, where elections are merely a meaningless ritual with the outcome pre-determined. Following the 2024 Lok Sabha election results, the regime appears determined to prevent any free and fair elections from taking place.
But the civil society and social movements of the country seem obstinately reluctant to own up to their own failures. The progressive political class – despite staring at its own impending annihilation – does little more than press conferences, photo ops, and posting on social media.
The time then seems ripe for wide-ranging reforms within progressive political formations and political systems at large. In a country with an laudable and ancient tradition of social, economic, legal, constitutional, and religious reforms, such a political reformation is not as difficult as the abysmal state of affairs may make it seem.
It is against this backdrop and with these principles that the Political Systems Project was founded to foil the palpable plans to destroy the Indian constitution and democracy completely.
Political Systems Project 