For a country and a people so obsessed with politics, it is invariably a matter of surprise and regret that every time the interested reader actually seeks to investigate any question that bothers her in any detail, extant scholarship invariably comes short. It is another matter that this does not stop us from having sharply articulated views on every issue be it meta concerns about the cultural roots of Indian democracy, commonplace assertions about voting behaviour, in particular of marginalised groups and communities, or the likely implications of different policies designed to alter the life chances of different segments of our society. Equally intriguing is the fact that the quality of scholarship/research seems to have little role in influencing the quality of public discourse on the question.

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