The Mirror Cracked? On Democracy, Welfare Politics, and India’s General Election featuring Yamini Aiyar, Senior Visiting Fellow at Brown University, was hosted at HKS on September 23, 2024. In this talk, Yamini discusses the intersections between welfare politics, state capability, and democratic institutions in India’s 2024 elections. She examines how direct benefit transfers and technology-driven welfare schemes have shaped political attribution and voter behavior and highlights the emergence of competitive welfare politics among regional parties and the impact this has had on federal dynamics.
Yamini raises additional concerns about how this welfare system may be changing the nature of citizenship and centralizing power in the hands of a small number of political elites. She emphasizes the importance of maintaining public spaces for contestation in governance and pushes for a nuanced understanding of state capacity that extends beyond technological interventions. Aiyar concludes by reflecting on why professions and institutions in India have struggled to maintain independence from the state and calls for strengthening democratic institutions.
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