Rahul Verma is a Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, and co-author along with Pradeep Chhibber of Ideology and Identity: The Changing...
Rahul Verma is a Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, and co-author along with Pradeep Chhibber of Ideology and Identity: The Changing Party Systems of India. Verma’s work has focused on understanding the many factors at play in Indian politics, and elections in particular, and scrutinising the conventional wisdom to see if it holds up.
Ideology and Identity: The Changing Party Systems of India attempts to push back against the idea that Indians only vote on the basis of their identities, and suggests that ideology too plays a role – albeit not on the standard left-right axes that we are used to in Western polities.
I spoke to Verma about the voter confusion that may lie at the core of the coming Bihar elections, misconceptions about Indian politics that are still commonplace, and what research he would like to see done in the political science space.
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What got you into political science, and what has your work focused on so far?
I’ve been interested in elections and politics for a very long time. I don’t know...
