The South Asian Studies Council Fall 2025 Colloquium Series presents
Amogh Dhar Sharma, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford:
“The Backstage of Democracy: India’s Election Campaigns and The People Who Manage Them.”
Over the last decade, election campaigns in India have undergone a dramatic shift. Political parties increasingly rely on political consultants, spin-doctors, pollsters, and data-driven insights to mobilize voters. But what is driving these changes? Drawing upon my recently published monograph, this talk explores the hidden arena of strategizing and deliberations that takes place between politicians and a new cabal of political professionals as they organize election campaigns in India. I argue that the changes in electioneering are not reducible to a story of technological innovations alone. Rather, they are indicative of a new landscape where ideas of political expertise, the distribution of power within parties, and citizens’ attitudes towards political participation have undergone a profound change.
Amogh Dhar Sharma’s first book, The Backstage of Democracy: India’s Election Campaigns and the People Who Manage Them, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2024. Currently, he is working on a project on the history of opinion polls and psephology in post-independence India.