ABOUT THE TALK
This lecture tries to unpack the idea of political consensus in the Indian context. A ‘political consensus’ may be conceptualized as a tacit, unwritten, and implied arrangement that is deliberately worked out by competing political actors and groups to facilitate the smooth functioning of the state in a democratic set up. Discussing a few crucial moments of Indian democracy, this lecture highlights the changing nature of political discourse in post-2010 India. This exploration, it is argued, might help us to make sense of the ways in which a specific set of ideas–nation, nationalism and the role of the state–are given certain acceptable interpretations, especially in the realm of electoral politics.

This talk will be moderated by Prof Bishnu N Mohapatra, Professor of Politics, SIAS, Krea University.