About the Website
This website has been created for the above project and will carry short field reports from researchers who are currently conducting ethnographic research into the meaning that elections hold for the electorate. Shifting the emphasis away from 'who will win', this study of elections will investigate the reasons for why people vote at all, what their motivations are, how the election campaign is experienced by ordinary voters and what their experience of casting their vote on election day is like. We hope to update these posts frequently during the period of the elections.
Project Specifics
This project is entitled 'Panchayat and Vidhan Sabha elections 2012-2015' with Dr Mukulika Banerjee of the London School of Economics and Political Science as its Principal Investigator and is a part of a larger study launched by the European Research Network Programme: "Explaining Electoral Change in Rural and Urban India". It is funded by the Indian-European Research Networking Programme ANR-DFG-ESRC-ICSSR-NOW Joint Funding Scheme, Reference Number: 465-11-031.
Project Site
This study currently being conducted during the State level Vidhan Sabha elections in the states of Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi, is part of a larger three-year project to investigate these questions. The four project sites identified for this year's project are: 1. Kelabari, Dalli Rajhara, Chattisgarh, 2. Sirohi, Abu Road, Rajasthan, 3. Raghubir Nagar, Rajouri Garden, Delhi and 4. Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh.
Project Execution
Governance Now, a print and web publication on public policy, is executing this project study under the supervision of Dr Banerjee. Two senior journalists of Governance Now will be observing the elections for one month by living in the vicinity of the project sites. They have been on the ground since November 14.
Researchers
A senior journalist with more than two decades of experience working in some of the biggest media houses, he is stationed at Kelabari, Dalli Rajhara, Chattisgarh.
Brajesh Kumar: A special correspondent with Governance Now, Brajesh is winner of this year's Press Council of India's National Award for Rural Reporting for his reporting from Revdakalan, Abu Road, Rajasthan. He will revisit the place for this project.
Jasleen Kaur: A principal correspondent with Governance Now, Jasleen has covered Delhi extensively in her career. She will track Raghubir Nagar, part of the Rajouri Garden constituency of Delhi.
Srishti Pandey: A correspondent with Governance Now, Srishti will cover Samardha, close to Madhya Pradesh's capital Bhopal.
Earlier Project Sites
As part of this project last year, Governance Now journalists covered two constituencies in Gujarat. Click here to read their reports.
ABOUT RAGHUBIR NAGAR
WHAT: Raghubir Nagar is a resettlement colony, part of the Rajouri Garden assembly constituency in west Delhi. We are focusing on polling station nunmber 63(1138 Votes: 588 male 550 female) and 64 (1201 Votes: 661 male 540 female). The polling booth will be located in an Government School in Raghubir Nagar.
The colony is divided into various blocks. A majority of the inhabitants in these blocks are migrant families of Gujarat, who go door to door offering steel utensils in exchange of old clothes. Women and children are equally involved in earning the livelihood this way. And perhaps that’s the reason that most families do not send their children, especially girls, to school.
People start their day as early as 5 am, when they go to a nearby mandi to sell old clothes. And in the afternoon they leave their houses again to sell utensils in exchange of old clothes in various residential colonies.
Apart from Gujarati migrants, the colony is also home to people from other communities who are construction workers or labourers. Most women in these households stay back at home and some earn living by doing works like stitching.
The colony is surrounded by an upscale residential neighbourhood which has several posh shopping malls. In stark contrast to the surroundings, this colony has seen hardly any development in recent years.
The families living here were allotted plots many years ago, when the government removed ‘jhuggi jhopri’ (JJ) cluster. Though many have pucca houses now, there are also some who live in jhuggis and are deprived of even the basic urban amenities.
Streets - rather small congested lanes – are not built properly. Each is lined with an open drain. During rains, the lanes are filled with ankle-deep water mixed with waste from the overflowing drains. The streets and parks are filled garbage.
WHO: The current MLA is Dyanand Chandila of Congress.