Disaster Mayawati must be a warning signal to the ever growing queue of prime ministerial aspirants.

'Best Ramasamy', president of Tamil Nadu's newest party, says it is time that the state had a change in its leaders.

'If they get less than 150, they will be communal as far as the other parties are concerned. 150 will be a communal number and 150 and above will be a secular number!' Cho Ramaswamy on the 2009 Lok Sabha election.

'Today's national picture, where the power rests with the states and not with the Centre, is like the picture of India before the British took power in India,' says thinker Dr Ashok Mitra.

'If the Left can get its plans and policies in place and is able to influence the direction of the new government, then we will join,' says powerful CPI-M leader Biman Bose.

'The BJP ran a miserable campaign and the Third Front, happily, was clueless. It also showed the disutility of a negative campaign where the BJP could not proffer any viable policy alternatives to Congress,' says Professor Sumit Ganguly.

'At the moment, we don't visualise any scenario where the support of the Left will be an indispensable factor. The Congress is comfortable with its present allies. We will add to their number in the coming days.'

'It has everything to do with the West Bengal government's policies. They were too much in a hurry. They should not have hurried through with the land acquisition,' feels RSP leader T J Chandrachoodan.

'She did not push him nor did she push the party in his direction. If she had declared him a leader, that would have been her biggest mistake. She did not do that,' says political thinker Sanjay Kumar.

Election Commissioner S Y Quarishi on Election 2009 and the challenges many the Election Commission faced.

In a no-holds-barred conversation, Chandan Mitra, editor and managing director of The Pioneer, member of the Rajya Sabha and BJP supporter, tells Savera R Someshwar that the blame for the failure lies squarely at the party's door.

Therese Tucker, founder and chief executive of BlackLine Inc., tells WSJ's Veronica Dagher how she got her big idea and advanced in the technology industry, and what she's learned about wealth.

Greek architect Tilemachos Andrianopoulos provides a tour of his design: a triangular home that blurs the line between inside and the olive grove outside. "Even for a completely new structure, there is always something that already exists there," he says. Photo: Rob Alcaraz/The Wall Street Journal

A modern, 7,500 square-foot home connects owner Elizabeth Grossman to the nature and ‘spiritual vortex’ that drew her to Lanikai, a neighborhood on Oahu. She gives us a tour, and explains why it’s time to sell. Photo: Adam Falk/The Wall Street Journal

The coronavirus pandemic is disrupting the global economy. WSJ’s Greg Ip explains what the Federal Reserve can do to stem the damage. Illustration: Carlos Waters/WSJ

U.S. employers shed 701,000 jobs in March, in the worst month for job losses since the 2007-2009 recession. But these losses still don't show the pandemic's full impact on the labor market. WSJ's Eric Morath explains. Photo: JOHN MINCHILLO/ASSOCIATED PRESS

A citizens' committee in Karnataka decides that the people can aid the Election Commission's efforts at reducing the presence of criminals in politics.

'God's own country' was at the polls earlier this month on May 10. A report based on the Kerala Election Watch committee's analysis of candidate affidavits and subsequent results.

The best of India must stop running independent side-shows, and bring their energy and vision to well-constructed political spaces, and let this be their contribution to changing India, writes Surendra Srivastava.

Mainstream media may play up the parliamentary contest as a battle of Goliaths, but statistical analysis reveals the true diversity in the Indian party system and the inevitability of coalitions. Srinivasan Ramani brings us the real picture.

The controversy over the Gadgil and Kasturirangan reports on ecological preservation in the Western Ghats has brought about a churn in politics in Kerala. P N Venugopal wonders if this will determine the decisions of the electorate in the Lok Sabha elections.

With the manifestos of all major national parties finally released, Himanshu Thakkar presents a comparative reading with a lens on environment and natural resource management.

Gujarat bucks the urban trend when it comes to identity voting, while cities in the prosperous northern states place high emphasis on choice of MP candidates. Srinivasan Ramani discovers several interesting facts on urban choice, through GIS mapping of data obtained from a voter perception survey.

Atum Welly, a former Congress minister in Arunachal Pradesh who switched to the BJP, alleges that a fraudulent move threw him out of the election process, as the Election Commission of India accepted a forged letter of withdrawal. What’s more, he is not alone! Ramesh Menon reports.

Days before the much-hyped showdown between Narendra Modi and Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi, Prabhu Mallikarjunan pays a visit to the holy city to know more about the loyalties and concerns of people on the ground.

Any election campaign and process needs money, and as long as the exercise of money power is well-regulated, it can never thwart the power of the people, feels P V Rajeev.

Combining provisional voter turnout data and the perceptions of MP performance based on the Daksh-ADR survey, Srinivasan Ramani attempts to make reasonable assessments about what could be behind the high turnouts in this Lok Sabha elections.

The results of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections apparently point to an abysmal failure of new politics as championed by the Aam Aadmi Party, but a deeper look by Himanshu Upadhyaya suggests all may not be over just as yet.

How strong was the Modi wave? Did recent state elections impact voter choice in parliamentary elections? Did better performing MPs necessarily augur well for their parties? A statistical analysis by Srinivasan Ramani finds interesting linkages between these and the UPA drubbing.

While the entire country appeared unimpressed by the Aam Aadmi Party and its promises, Punjab not only sent four of its candidates to the Lok Sabha, but also overcame the rural-urban divide in its mandate for the party. Srinivasan Ramani explores why.

In the 2014 elections, the BJP won 66 out of 131 seats reserved for SC/ST candidates, which is the highest for any single party since 1991. Prabhu Mallikarjunan looks at the statistics and tries to decipher what this says for voting behaviour in these constituencies.

The 2009 election will mark the rapid decline of India.

The verdict of the 2009 general election has once again brought the 'centre' in Indian politics to centre-stage. India has returned to an even keel.

If he shall not do so today, can Dr Manmohan Singh ever push reforms and infrastructure initiatives?

It was clear that with its preponderant numbers, the Congress, is not going to be the same old diffident, submissive push-over that it was in the lean days of the first term of the United Progressive Alliance. The DMK, in particular, needed to be circumspect in making its demands, not only to avoid giving the impression of having its eye only on 'juicy' ministries, but also because it had a weak suit.

With the tide in favour of Narendra Modi, his shift to Delhi is inevitable. Aditi Phadnis examines

Now that the numbers are out and it is nowhere near as spectacular as expected/feared by some or hyped by many -- it is Narendra Modi's lowest in three elections -- it is a sobering thought. Is this the best he can do, wonders Saisuresh Sivaswamy.

For those without a ticket at the London games, there's another option. A game design group, Hide&Seek, has placed 99 "Tiny Games" in each of London's 33 boroughs. They're meant to be happened upon, and as WSJ's Andy Jordan finds out, they can lead to some random and funny situations.

"The Bay Lights" light installation, inspired by the 75th anniversary of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, is officially unveiled March 5. Here's a preview of what it will look like, and a conversation the artist, Leo Villareal.

Should you Zoom or FaceTime? How about a Houseparty? Amid social distancing, in-person events have been replaced by pixels on a screen. WSJ's Nicole Nguyen offers tips for navigating the new video-chat reality. Photo: FaceTime

In our coronavirus-tainted world, we’re realizing that we depend a lot on our laptop webcams… and they’re not good. WSJ’s Joanna Stern compared the new MacBook Air to the Dell XPS 13, Google’s Pixelbook Go and Microsoft’s Surface Laptop 3.

The coronavirus pandemic means we must wear masks. It also means unlocking an iPhone with Face ID is a challenge. WSJ’s Joanna Stern tracked down a woman who created a mask to get around it.

The new iPhone SE may seem like a sad, recycled phone but it's more than that. WSJ's Joanna Stern (with the help of an animator) brought the budget phone to life to explain how its performance and camera tricks make it a worthy option—even compared to its expensive, bigger iPhone 11 siblings.

Struggling to preserve their livelihood in the face of the rapid expansion of the Mundra Port and Special Economic Zone in Gujarat, the women and men of nearby fishing villages are trying hard to come to terms with a changing world. Geeta Seshu has more.

By bringing the benefits and the knowledge of science to their people, Haseena and Tajunnisa have helped secure the future for the resources on which their families depend. Their home, Agatti, has, now become a model, writes Papri Sri Raman.

An expert committee appointed to review the existing marine fishing policy and suggest a new one has come up with recommendations favouring the bigger, foreign players, drawing the ire of the smaller fishing community. P N Venugopal has more.

Safety and criminality in society must be assessed directly from the people themselves. The government is deluding itself and citizens by conflating law enforcement statistics with crime data, writes Tara Krishnaswamy.

Issues that affect underprivileged women have not got enough attention in the mainstream feminist movements in India. Yet the women from rural areas and from lower classes and castes have been leading struggles for their rights, says Navya P. K.

The government proposes to replace a number of laws protecting the social security of workers with a single Code. But could its vast scope itself make it vulnerable to the details in fine print?

Twenty years after the Brundtland report, it is self-evident that economic growth which consumes resources without regenerating them is, by very definition, unsustainable. But despite taking the moral high ground early, India's record on this front has been at best a mixed one, writes Darryl D'Monte.