8 - Conclusion

Summary

The point of departure of this book was the attempt to analyse the changing nature of election campaigns and intra-party organisational change in India that has taken place in the last decade. I have argued that ‘professionalisation of politics’ is the appropriate analytical category through which we can capture these changes, identify their causal drivers and understand the possible implications of this trend for the future of Indian democracy. In this book, ‘professionalisation’ has been understood to be constituted by three interrelated features. First, it includes the growing salience of technology and technological solutions to carry out quotidian tasks in the world of politics. This change can be seen in activities ranging from the aggressive use of new media technology for political communication to the increased reliance on ‘scientific’ opinion polling and data analytics to understand public opinion. Second, professionalisation entails the emergence of new kinds of actors—labelled in this book as ‘political professionals’—and a specialisation in the work performed by them. In particular, I have discussed the growing role of party employees (which capture the internal dimension of professionalisation) and political consulting firms (which capture the external dimension of professionalisation) in India. Third, professionalisation is also a discursive practice insofar as it provides a shared imaginary for different actors to articulate new ideas, visions, aspirations and expectations related to politics. Thus, for example, in this book, we encounter political consultants who believed that they were reforming Indian politics by making it more organised, efficient and rationalised through their work. While it is tempting to dismiss this as mere rhetoric, the discourse surrounding professionalisation is, in fact, a crucial tool through which such new actors seek to legitimise their presence and participation in politics.

When thinking about the professionalisation of politics, it is important to consider the three aforementioned features as a conceptual whole and not as discrete elements that are independent of one another. Thus, for example, the introduction of technological innovations in politics is in itself not a sign of professionalisation. This is because, at each point in time, politicians have tried to use the most advanced form of technology available to them (as discussed in Chapter 3).