India is a nation obsessed with opinion polls. Since the 1980s, the country has witnessed the rise of a thriving industry of pollsters who produce periodic ‘mood-of-the-nation’ surveys, with particular emphasis on election forecasts and exit polls. These polls are widely consumed across print and digital media platforms and have also given birth to self-styled amateur psephologists. This project seeks to study how and why opinion polls acquired their ubiquity and widespread legitimacy in modern India.

This inter-disciplinary project draws on insights from history, political science, and anthropology to map the place of opinion polls in India’s democratic life. To do this, it will bring two levels of enquiry into conversation with one another. On the one hand, it will study the forgotten actors and institutions who have played a key role in popularizing polling and perfecting its modus operandi in the Indian context. On the other hand, it will also analyse the meanings and values that ordinary Indian citizens have come to ascribe to these polls when they consume their insights through mainstream media.

Although the history of the origin and expansion of polling in North America and Western Europe is well recorded, perspectives from the Global South have rarely figured in academic debates. In addressing this gap, Amogh hopes to contribute to a larger set of debates on the role of statistics and data in modern democratic politics and shed light on global histories of science and technology. 

At a time when the exit polls for the 2024 Indian General Elections went fatally wrong and have generated a nationwide debate about the integrity of pollsters, it has become more crucial than ever to understand how and why polling and psephologists of various shades remain central to India’s public life.