India Votes 2024: A Four-Part Series

2024 is a significant election year globally with more voters than ever before heading to the polls. India will hold the largest election of them all and is one of several South Asian countries to have national votes this year. This four-part series – led by Harvard Professors Arunabh Ghosh, Maya Jasanoff and Vatsal Naresh – will feature cutting-edge scholars across the social sciences and media who will come together over the next two months to provoke discussions about democracy, the press, and diasporic politics that resonate with parallel trends in the U.S., Asia, and globally.

Part 1: The World’s Largest Democracy?

How should we assess India’s standing as the “world’s largest democracy,” in theory and practice?

Date: Wednesday, March 6, 2024 at 05:30 pm
Location: CGIS South, Tsai Auditorium (S010)

This is the launch of the series, featuring the following speakers:

• Sandipto Dasgupta, Assistant Professor of Politics at the New School, and author of Legalizing the Revolution: India and the Constitution of the Postcolony
• Sushant Singh, Senior Fellow at Centre for Policy Research
• Raheel Dhattiwala, Baden-Wurttemberg Fellow at the South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg, and author of Keeping the Peace: Spatial Differences in Hindu-Muslim Violence in Gujarat in 2002

Moderator: Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of History, Harvard University

Part 2: From the Outside In

How do India’s neighbors perceive recent developments in India?

Date: Monday, March 25, 2024 at 12:00 pm
Location: Online on Zoom, with in-person watch party in CGIS South, Room S030 (Lee)

This session features the following speakers:

• Nusrat Chowdhury, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Amherst College
• Farzana Haniffa, Professor in the Department of Sociology, University of Colombo
• Nida Kirmani, Associate Professor of Sociology, Lahore University of Management Sciences
• Kanak Mani Dixit, Founding editor of Himal Southasian

Moderator: Arunabh Ghosh (Department of History, Harvard University)

Part 3: Covering the Elections

How does one report and present the results of elections for Indian and international audiences?

Date: Monday, April 8, 2024 at 12:00 pm
Location: Online on Zoom, with in-person watch party in CGIS South, Room S030 (Lee)

This session features the following speakers:

• Seema Chishti, editor, The Wire
• Vrinda Sharma, Producer and Lead Researcher, Ravish Kumar Official
• Naresh Fernandes, editor, Scroll
• Mujib Mashal, New Delhi Bureau Chief, The New York Times

Moderator: Vatsal Naresh (Harvard University)

Part 4: The Diaspora

How do South Asians in America react to Indian politics?

Date: Tuesday, April 16, 2024 at 05:30 pm
Location: CGIS South, Lee (S030)

This fourth and last part of the series features the following speakers:

• Sangay Mishra, Associate Professor of Political Science, Drew University
• Rozina Ali, Journalist
• Tanmay Misra, Independent Scholar
• Anjali Kamat, Documentary Filmmaker and Investigative Journalist

Moderator: Maya Jasanoff (Department of History, Harvard University)

This event series is co-sponsored by: