The objective of the course is to offer an analysis India’s democratic politics through the prism of the states based on comparing politics at the state level by taking select themes for closer study. While the pervasive pluralism provides specificity to politics in Indian states there is so much common between the states. This course proposes to understand the different modes of politics at the State level in a comparative perspective and in the process tries making some sense of Indian politics and policy. It seeks to avoid the tendency either to look at every state as unique in its politics or to fit all states into one universal narrative of Indian politics.