Suyash Rai talks to Sanjuktha Athreya, researcher at XKDR Forum, about the ways in which coalition politics at the national level can be good for the Indian economy.

Suyash is a Fellow and Deputy Director at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace India, where he works on India’s political economy.

In this video, he emphasises three mechanisms which makes coalition politics beneficial for economic development in India – credible commitment created when a policy is made after consultation, negotiation, and compromise; the possibility of policy learning created by having to take along coalition partners; and relatively more space created for statelevel policy experiments in the absence of an overbearing single party rule at the national level. Towards the end, Rai clarifies that this does not mean that coalition politics always works well for the economy. Democracy is selfgovernment, and coalition politics just creates space for more citizens to participate, and it is up to us as citizens to make use of this.

Reading material:
1. Irfan Nooruddin, Coalition Politics and Economic Development: Credibility and the Strength of Weak Governments, https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/...
2. Rob Jenkins, Democratic Politics and Economic Reform in India, https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/...

About the speaker:
https://x.com/suyashrai

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