Over the last decade, election campaigns in India have undergone a dramatic shift. Political parties increasingly rely on political consultants, spin-doctors, pollsters, and data-driven insights to mobilize voters. What is driving these changes? Drawing upon a recently published monograph, this talk explores the hidden arena of planning and strategizing that takes place between politicians and a new cabal of political professionals as they organize election campaigns in India. It argues that the change in electioneering is not reducible to a story of technological innovations alone. Rather, it is indicative of a new landscape where ideas of political expertise, the distribution of power within parties, and citizens’ attitudes towards political participation have undergone a profound change.
Amogh Dhar Sharma is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Oxford and the author of The Backstage of Democracy: India's Election Campaigns and the People Who Manage Them (Cambridge University Press), which was nominated for the 2025 Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay Book Prize. His research interests include comparative politics, media and political communication, and opinion polls.