India's Five State Elections and their Implications

The past few months have been election season in India. Although these are state elections, many view them as a key midterm evaluation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP government. What are the takeaway messages from these recently concluded assembly elections?

In this episode, we zoom in on the elections in the five Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa, Manipur, and Punjab. Kenneth Bo Nielsen is joined by a panel of experts on Indian democracy and politics: Arild Ruud, Guro Samuelsen, Edward Moon-Little, Rahul Ranjan and Shreya Sinha, who analyze the results from all five states, the BJP’s impressive performance, and the many localized surprises that these elections threw up. We also reflect on the implications of the outcome for national politics as the next general election scheduled for 2024 inches ever closer.

Guro Samuelsen is postdoctoral fellow at MF School of theology, Religion and Society, where she is part of the ‘Mythopolitics in South Asia’ project.

Arild Engelsen Ruud is professor of South Asia Studies at the University of Oslo.

Edward Moon-Little candidate in social anthropology at Cambridge and a fellow at the Highland Institute.

Rahul Ranjan is postdoctoral fellow at Oslo Metropolitan University, where he is part of the ‘Riverine Rights’ project.

Shreya Sinha is lecturer in international development at University of Reading.

The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo.

We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.