India Inked

On an average, India has two to five elections in any given year. With 15 million polling staff, 5.5 million electronic voting machines, officers trekking across glaciers, forests, deserts, riding elephants and camels, travelling by boats and helicopters to ensure the last standing Indian citizen gets to cast their vote, the Indian general election is a beast unto itself. In the summer of 2024, 969 million Indians cast their votes and the incumbent Narendra Modi was elected prime minister for a third consecutive term.

When Poonam Agarwal first began reporting on the electoral bonds scheme, she had not foreseen that her investigative work would imminently make history in one of the most landmark Supreme Court judgements. In her trailblazing pursuit, she chased the big questions that the media, courts and citizens had no easy answers to.

Just how big is the Indian electoral machinery? Are money and muscle power in bed together? Was the electoral bonds scheme ‘one of the biggest legalised robberies’? What tools do political parties assemble for campaigning and propaganda? And what will the imminent exercise of redrawing of electoral boundaries, muscular calls for ‘one nation one election’, and the women’s reservation bills mean for the fabric of the Indian polity?

With insights into the forbidden world of election war rooms, on how electoral strategies are formulated and rules bent, what works with voters on the ground and what simply doesn’t, Poonam Agarwal’s India Inked is nothing short of a revelation into the inner workings of politics in the world’s largest democracy.