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For Jaffrelot, Modi’s personalization of power coupled with identifying the cosmopolitan origins of the Nehru-Gandhi family in particular allowed him to claim ownership to being a victim of elite politics along with the common people. This ‘national-populism’ for Jaffrelot is undergirded by a mimetic syndrome wherein Modi successfully managed to create a discourse of unanimism—the idea that the people and the leader are one and the same. This ‘Moditva’

The rest of the essays in Part II of the book are rooted in different aspects of elections. ‘Election Time’ by Anupama Roy and Ujjwal Kumar Singh reiterates elections as an expression of popular sovereignty, highlights the significance of the Election Commission of India (ECI). Election time also serves as a site of electoral morality in the Model Code of Conduct (MCC)

While reading the book I couldn’t help but think of a very disturbing image from news this year when a part of the roof at Delhi airport’s Terminal 1 collapsed, killing a cab driver waiting for passengers and injuring several others. Compensations were announced and allegations and counter allegations between the ruling government and the opposition followed.

Anup Shekjhar Chakraborty looks at the phenomenon of ‘notices’ in the Northeast which are handed out as local communitarian commands. Here the community replaces the state as the focal point of governance. Pratip Chattopadhyay analyses how debates are conducted in Indian tele-media. He calls for a more participatory model of debating to ensure more meaningful participation of the new generation. Vinod Pavarala draws our attention to a now forgotten medium of political communication

Chapters five, ‘Can Umbrella Parties Survive? The Decline of the Indian National Congress’, and seven, ‘Coalition Strategies and the BJP’s Expansion 1989-2004’ provide a long-term perspective on the two largest parties: the Congress and the BJP. Chapter five, coauthored with Adnan Farooqui, provides a critical assessment of Congress’s diminished capacity to act as an ‘umbrella party’ based on electoral rules

Coming to the limitations of the book, the author’s desire to give a simple and accessible introduction to the idea/ideal of secularism does not get involved with the various intellectual critiques of secularism as a western hegemonic ideology particularly put forth by Islamists and decoloniality theorists.