"India’s 2024 General Election: What to Know" - by CWP alum Manjari Chatterjee Miller
India has a multiparty parliamentary government with a bicameral legislature. This year’s elections—set to begin April 19—are for India’s lower house of Parliament, the Lok Sabha, which has 543 seats. The party or coalition of parties that wins a majority will nominate a candidate for prime minister and form a ruling government.
Currently, the BJP rules with a coalition known as the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), Recent opinion polls heavily favor the BJP, Modi, and many of their allies to remain in power. The main challenge to the BJP is led by the Indian National Congress, or “the Congress” as it is popularly known, which is the only other party with a cross-national appeal. However, the Congress lost dismally in the previous two national elections, held in 2014 and 2019.
The election date for the world’s largest democracy is set to begin April 19 and last six weeks. What would the results of a third term for Prime Minister Modi mean for India’s economy, democracy, and position in the Global South?
Expert Brief by Manjari Chatterjee Miller - April 2, 2024 1:15 pm (EST)
Manjari Chatterjee Miller is senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). She is also a research associate in the Contemporary South Asian Studies Programme at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies at the University of Oxford. An expert on India, China, South Asia, and rising powers, she is the author of Why Nations Rise: Narratives and the Path to Great Power (2021, shortlisted for the 2022 Hedley Bull Prize in International Relations) and Wronged by Empire: Post-Imperial Ideology and Foreign Policy in India and China (2013). Miller is also the co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of China-India Relations (2020), a columnist for the Hindustan Times, and a frequent contributor to policy and media outlets in the United States and Asia.
Photo Credit: By Rally picture..nobody owns. - Captured at rally....Made at shops, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=100460429
