This book provides scholarly insights into India's binary elections with in-depth research on the electoral process. It analyzes the Ninth General Election that ratified the decline of the Congress Party dominance and the forces that seem to be driving Indian politics in the post-Cold War era.

Part One: The Ninth General Election: The Hung Parliament 1. Introduction: The Ninth General Election 2. Patterns of Political Mobilization in the Parliamentary and Assembly Elections of 1989 and 1990 3. Local Support Bases and the Ninth General Election in Bihar and Maharashtra 4. The Janata Dale in the Ninth Indian General Election or 1989 and Its Future Prospects 5. Caste, Class, and Community in the Ninth General Elections for the Look Sabha in Uttar Pradesh 6. The Regionalization or Indian Electoral Politics, 1989–90: Punjab and Haryana 7. The Media and Cultural Politics 8. Women's Politics and Land Control in an Indian Election: Lasting Influences of the Freedom Movement in North Bihar 9. The Linkages Between Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy in the Ninth Indian General Election Part Two: Politics After Rajiv 10. Introduction to Part Two 11. Alliance Politics and Minority Government: India at the Polls, 1989 and 1991 12. Participation in India's Tenth General Election 13. The Rise of the BJP and the Future of Party Politics in Uttar Pradesh 14. Mandal, Mandir, and Dalits: Melding Class with Ethnoreligious Conflict in India's Tenth General Election 15. Violence, Agrarian Radicalism, and the Audibility or Dissent: Electoral Politics and the Indian People's 16. Defining Women's Politics in the Election or 1991 in Bihar 17. India's 1991 Elections: Regional Factors in Haryana and Punjab 18. The Salience or National Issues in the Tenth General Election in West Bengal 19. Why Rajiv Gandhi's Death Saved the Congress: How an Event Affected the Outcome of the 1991 Election in India