Debasish Roy Chowdhury at Project Syndicate:
Indians tend to fetishize elections, which now wholly define their self-imagination as a democratic society, obscuring other institutional necessities. The carnivalesque quality of the world’s biggest electoral process hides a bitter truth: this year’s elaborate exercise in offering the franchise to 970 million people has all the hallmarks of a despotic election. The voting is not overtly rigged (as in Russia’s farcical polls), but the playing field is tilted decisively in favor of the ruling party. The chances of an electoral upset have not been eliminated, just sharply minimized.
More here.