Articles by Sukumar Muralidharan

The greatest weakness of Indian electoral politics, as practised within the Westminster model adopted at independence, is the reward it offers for the politics of exclusion. Several reforms are possible in the electoral system to ensure that the politics of polarisation is not advantageous. If India is not to become a republic of privilege where many are denied basic rights, this aspect must be addressed.

A camouflage for importing the more toxic doctrines of Israel’s military occupation of Palestine?

The original sin of Israel's birth has scarred it for life and it remains incapable of finding an identity that would meet basic democratic norms. Its neighbourhood in West Asia has had no option but to accept its truculent presence.All international law has to be rewritten, if necessary, to ensure Israel's state of exceptional nationhood. The United States' nuclear deal with Iran signals that the burden of carrying this exceptionalism is becoming too heavy to bear.

As electoral competition intensifies, the key battleground of Uttar Pradesh begins to experience severe stresses. Low level conflicts, amenable to resolution through local processes, are likely to explode into major electoral issues. The Bharatiya Janata Party, which seeks redemption from two electoral debacles in a return to its hardline ideological agenda, will strive to dismantle electoral bonds created as acts of resistance to its majoritarianism. Its competitor, the Samajwadi Party which holds power in the state, will try to induce the religious minority, which has substantial electoral clout, to forget their divided loyalties and invest solely in it.

Constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and expression in India today, seem a distant, almost illusory promise when the politics of the street -- and a loud and seriously misinformed media – are final arbiters of fundamental rights and the defence of privilege is becoming the dominant motif of state policy.