Vandita Mishra

Concerns about the three farm laws, grounded in what they see and hear, and drawing from their own struggles and experience, are expressed most insistently by the smaller farmers.

The Indian Express found in a week-long journey through villages and cities across Punjab’s three regions that the image of the un-seeing Centre is compounded by the spate of name-calling.

Despite a last-minute attempt by Team Tejashwi to package him anew — or perhaps because of the last-minuteness of it — RJD’s new chief ministerial candidate was carrying into this election neither a narrative nor a clean slate.

Tejashwi, the candidate with a past, will need to overcome the hesitations of this voter to talk to him, and listen to him, outside of the RJD’s Muslim-Yadav base.

As discontents with 15 years of Nitish raj rise to the fore, and a desire for bringing in the new makes itself heard in Bihar, Tejashwi Yadav’s RJD faces a difficult predicament in this election: It is new — but it is also old.

For the first time in 15 years in Bihar, Nitish is at the receiving end of, not in the driving seat of, the desire for change.

The three-term Chief Minister looks alone with the people’s anger points to a formless opponent, and an ally receding from the stage.

For all the chants and invocations of a past glory, culture and civilisation, the spectacle in Ayodhya was about the leader, here and now: Modi, wearing longer hair and a mask, framed solo, no props or supporting cast, enacting a by-now familiar script of Fall and Rise.

From Dalit basti in Gaya to village near Dhanbad, refrain: humein kaun hatayega (who will turn us out?)

As Shaheen Bagh took centrestage in the high-octane campaign in the Capital, The Indian Express travelled from West Bengal, Ground Zero of the NRC debate, to UP, which saw the most deaths in the crackdown. To find out how Shaheen Bagh plays out, how the protests unite — and divide

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman was the guest at the recent Express Adda held in Mumbai. She spoke to The Indian Express on India’s decision to not join the RCEP, boosting investment and ushering in reforms

In this political landscape, the BJP has risen in the last couple of elections, not because it presented an alternative to Haryana’s fluid power politics but because it harnessed it to its own advantage, most visibly through the politics of defections

Akhilesh Yadav interview: "There is nothing special about the BJP. They have only cheated the country. When the BJP came to power, the country was under a debt of Rs 35 lakh crore. In the last five years, it has gone up to Rs 70 lakh crore. Where did this Rs 35 lakh crore go?"

Today, the candidates from Allahabad have become relatively non-descript, but the political divisions are far sharper — and that question in the Coffee House has acquired a never-before edge.

Chitrakoot, denuded of political norms and institutions that can be found at least in bare form, if not in substance, elsewhere, seems to provide the perfect setting for the politics of the Saviour and the Superhero that lies at the heart of the well-endowed Narendra Modi campaign.

If the BJP-led NDA has Narendra Modi, the RJD-led Mahagathbandhan is anchored by Lalu Yadav in the state.

Tea was what you had with “charcha (conversation)”. Now, “charcha is hardly there. We have distanced ourselves from our own problems, we are scattered,” says a retired teacher, a regular from the old days, who sits silently on the bench inside and refuses to give his name.

The “Son of Mallah”, who claims to speak for the larger community of fishermen, represents 'social justice' as spectacle, with its terribly shortened journeys: In a little over four years, Mukesh Sahani has travelled to electoral politics from a Bollywood film set.

The sense of little changing, despite the change, and of political leaders and their election campaigns bypassing the woman in Rajasthan is irrefutable, most of all, in the home of Bhanwari Devi.

In Mohalla Chopdaran, in the heart of the tiny town of Jhunjhunu, a group of young Muslim men talk of an increase in “bhed bhaav (discrimination)” and intolerance.

If the Congress seems to be the missing middle of the Opposition on bijli-sadak-paani, it is even more elusive and evasive on another set of issues.

On the ground, RSS workers also grumble about “Madam”. They accuse her administration of being non-responsive to their agitations — against the demolition and relocation of temples because of Metro work in Jaipur, or against “love jihad” in districts across the state.

The New Lucknow, Part 4: In the eight months of the Yogi government, SP is tongue-tied, the whir of BSP's formidable party machine, which prepares for polls so meticulously, is barely noticeable among the people, on issues of governance.

The New Lucknow, Part 3: For long, cover of secularism was used as an excuse for neglecting madrasas, now govt harsh light casts a shadow