India’s election machinery has long been treated by its domestic critics as a convenient punching bag. Now, rather unexpectedly, America appears to be taking notes from its. U.S, President Donald Trump recently used a routine meeting between his ambassador to India, Sergio Gor, and Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar to pitch his proposed Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act. The legislation, pending in the US Senate since last year, would require prospective

In India’s political imagination, the Election Commission occupies a curious space. It is one of the republic’s most powerful constitutional bodies, yet it often behaves like a nervous clerk caught between warring political factions. That is partly why Gyanesh Kumar has become such a consequential figure, especially after his recent triumphal conduct of key Assembly polls, particularly that in the volatile eastern state of West Bengal. At a time when institutions are routinel

Craftsmen at a handloom unit manually print the BJP logo onto large pieces of cloth ahead of the West Bengal Assembly elections in Nadia on Friday. Pic: PTI New Delhi: Elections in West Bengal have long outgrown the idea of being merely a democratic festival; they now represent a complex socio-political reality where hope is persistently shadowed by fear. With each electoral cycle, the same unsettling question returns: will the grip of violence loosen this time, or is repetit