Coalition Politics in India

This project will examine patterns of coalition politics and the record of coalition governments at the Centre and in six states. The project commenced in October 2003 for a three-year duration. A planning meeting of the project was held on December 13, 2003. Six political scientists are participating in the project and are doing state-level fieldwork and writing a detailed paper on coalition politics in their states. They are: Suhas Palshikar, University of Pune (Maharashtra), G. Gopakumar, University of Kerala (Kerala), G. Koteswara Prasad, University of Madras (Tamil Nadu), Amiya Chaudhuri, University of Calcutta (West Bengal), Pramod Kumar, Institute for Development and Communication, Chandigarh (Punjab), and Sanjay Kumar, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (Bihar). E. Sridharan, UPIASI, is directing the project and will research and write papers on coalition politics at the Centre and on national parties. The project is supported by the Ford Foundation.

UPIASI held the second meeting of its research project, “Coalition Politics in India”, to examine patterns of coalition politics and the record of coalition governments at the Centre and in six states on March 19-20, 2005. Draft papers were presented on coalition politics at the Centre and in six states – West Bengal, Kerala, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Punjab. Revised papers based on further fieldwork were presented at conferences held on April 14-15, 2006, and September 8-9, 2006. The manuscript is under preparation for publication.