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The Indian Polity Today and the Road Ahead

It's a great honour to have been asked to deliver the ninth Prem Bhatia Memorial lecture. Prem Bhatia's reputation as an upright journalist, editor and commentator should serve as an inspiration for us all. I, therefore, join you in paying my very warm personal tribute to the memory of an outstanding editor, and thank the Prem Bhatia Memorial Trust for asking me to deliver this year's lecture. Prem Bhatia was always deeply concerned and engaged with India's democratic processes, their sustenance and development. It is therefore appropriate that I focus today on Indian elections and democracy at a very crucial juncture in our political history. The last general elections in which three hundred and fifty million people turned out to vote has produced a dramatic political upset; the greatest in Indian politics, and perhaps anywhere in the world.1 Very few could have foreseen that the Congress-led alliance would win thirty seats more than the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP)-led combine. Few expected the Congress to emerge as the single largest party ahead of the BJP. No one could predict the unprecedented increase in the weight of the Left in national politics, with over sixty seats in a 543-member Lok Sabha and, given these numbers, qualitatively well-placed to influence the economic, political, and foreign policies of the new government.2 Overall, the stunning verdict signals the strong roots that electoral democracy has struck in India. Perhaps no election result, not even the defeat of Indira Gandhi and the Congress party in 1977, has been