IAPS/PSA-sponsored workshop on the India 2014 Election, Nottingham 3rd July 2014

The Politics of South Asia Specialist Group of the PSA and the Institute of Asia and Pacific Studies of the School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham, co-organised a successful one day workshop on the India 2014 elections. The workshop assessed the campaign, results and outcome of the biggest election the world has ever seen, which saw the Hindu Nationalist party, the BJP, achieve an overall majority. This result swept away many presumptions about the inability of national parties to come to power on their own, in the absence of coalition party support. The workshop followed on from the successful #Indiavotes2014 blog, run from the Ballots and Bullets Blog at the University of Nottingham, to which many workshop participants had also contributed.

The workshop was kindly sponsored by two PSA grants – the Specialist Activities and the International Speaker competitions - and IAPS Nottingham. The keynote speaker of the workshop was Dr E. Sridharan, Director of the University of Pennsylvania Institute for the Advanced Study of India (UPIASI) in New Delhi. The topic of Dr Sridharan’s talk was ‘Election 2014: A Fundamental Change of Party System?’. Roundtables themes included Hindu Nationalism, Parties and Party Systems, and a discussion on possible future directions in government policy and political representation in the 16th Lok Sabha. Roundtable speakers included William Gould (Leeds), Nikita Sud (Oxford), Rochana Bajpai (SOAS), Rekha Diwakar (Sussex), Gurharpal Singh (SOAS), Andrew Wyatt (Bristol), James Chriyankandath (ICS),  Kunal Sen (Manchester), Louise Tillin (Kings), Carole Spary (York), and Simona Vittorini (SOAS).

Carole Spary (Politics of South Asia Specialist Group Convenor)

Katharine Adeney (Director, IAPS, University of Nottingham)