‘A permanent campaign machine’: How the professionalisation of politics has changed India after 2014

Over the last decade, Indian election campaigns have been transformed by the rise of a new ecosystem of political professionals – spin doctors, pollsters, data analysts, and political consultants – who now play a central role in shaping how parties strategise, communicate, and mobilise voters. While such trends were once associated with Western democracies, in his book The Backstage of Democracy: India’s Election Campaigns and The People Who Manage Them, Amogh Dhar Sharma reveals how this wave of “professionalisation” has taken root in India with astonishing speed. Moving beyond the surface spectacle of digital rallies and viral memes, the book offers a rare behind-the-scenes view of campaign war rooms and the new political culture emerging from these spaces.

Drawing on extensive interviews with top political consultants and archival materials spanning decades, the book argues that the professionalisation of Indian politics is not just a story of technological innovation, it is also a story about the changing architecture of power within parties, the rise of elite technocrats who now shape messaging from the top down, and the evolving attitudes of citizens towards political participation. The book pays close attention to how personalised political communication, fuelled by granular voter data, has enabled unprecedented targeting, but also...

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