{"id":2008,"date":"2019-04-06T19:59:17","date_gmt":"2019-04-06T19:59:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the-edict.in\/?p=2008"},"modified":"2019-04-28T08:05:21","modified_gmt":"2019-04-28T08:05:21","slug":"interview-with-professor-gilles-verniers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/2019\/04\/06\/interview-with-professor-gilles-verniers\/","title":{"rendered":"2019 with The Edict: We Speak to Professor Verniers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

2019 with The Edict<\/strong>, is the newspaper’s first foray into reporting elections. With the General Elections around the corner, we speak to Professor Gilles Verniers<\/strong>, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Ashoka University, and Co-Director of Trivedi Centre for Political Data<\/strong>. The Centre, inaugurated in 2015, is now one of the few organisations in the country with vast amount of data on Indian elections. Our Editor-in-Chief speaks to Professor Gilles about the elections, TCPD, and more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Professor Gilles at TCPD with the Centre’s mascot<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

TCPD is now entering its fourth year, could you reflect on your journey so far?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lot has happened over the past 3-4 years. The whole thing started with the 2014 general elections. Ashoka did not formally exist yet and I was teaching the YIFs. Since obviously I was interested in covering the elections I hired a couple of fellows with a computer science background to help me crawl and clean the data- help me churn out some visualisations a bit faster. We spent 30-36 continuous hours with just data, number crunching and publishing our very first pieces in Scroll. It was a great experience and it made me realise that we can actually do quite a bit with that association between computer and political science skills and so when we shifted to campus, I had the opportunity to repeat that kind of experience by hiring my own teams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea then became to convert these small research programs into something a little more solid: I started with very limited resources in the sixth floor of the admin building, with a few volunteers. I was then introduced to Mr Ashok Trivedi, who at the time was discussing the terms of a major donation to Ashoka. During the course of the conversation, he mentioned that he was interested in matters of public transparency, accountability of public actors so after a number of discussions he agreed to provide support to the centre, hence the name Trivedi Centre for Political Data. That really gave me the resources to build a permanent team, develop new projects, and build up the scope of the Centre.  We started training people, having a more permanent staff, holding a summer school. Gradually, we were able to raise our profile and build up the work that we do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How much has your trajectory changed since you first conceived of the Centre?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We started by looking at elections and\ncandidates to elections, and concentrated on making the data we built public. Looking\nahead, we don\u2019t want to be known just as a data service provider on elections.\nWe want to be a full-fledged research centre. Our mandate is to grow the scope\nof the centre. Right now, the vision is to grow from a centre that looks into\nelections and candidates into a centre that looks at public institutions at\nlarge. We want to document what the states do and who are the people making\ninstitutions work, the people behind the decisions and the implementation of\npolicies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We think that it is very important. When you have a dwindling presence of minorities among judges and at the same time, you have skewed application of punishment according to religion<\/g> of the culprit, studying this does matter. The same goes for other institutions \u2014 the IAS, the IPS, the judiciary. We are not interested to work only on apex institutions, as they\u2019re sometimes called.We<\/g> are also interested to look at far more granular, ground-level data, the frontline state. Every bit of data in India is connected to some baseline unit and all those units are different. They don\u2019t match at all, geographically speaking. So you have census blocks, census villages, revenue villages, police thanas, constituencies, Zillas, district, block, polling booths, panchayat, gram, etc. The aim is to connect all those baselines, defining a kind of grammar or an architecture that help us connect different sorts of data. This would have tremendous<\/g> enabling potential for future research. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another area of expansion is to go\nbeyond public institutions and also look at political violence. Because you\ncannot completely detach the study of violence with what the state does. Not\njust in terms of security but also in terms of public expenditure \u2014 is there a\nconnection between the location of protests and where public money is being\nspent or not? So you should be able to connect that thing together, that\u2019s the\nobjective. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everything is connected. For this, we\nneed to multiply the size of the centre by x<\/em> factor because we are\nalready quite overstretched just working on elections. Which means hiring new\npeople, creating positions, inviting more Ashoka faculty to be a part of some\nof the domains of interest \u2014 economists, computer scientists, sociologists. The\nway we function from the beginning, TCPD has always been an open collaboration\nand that\u2019s how we\u2019re going to grow. But that\u2019s going to require more resources,\nhaving more people, occupying more space in the university. I think it\u2019s super\nexciting. There\u2019s no equivalent. Even a centre like CPR, for example, is a\nconcentration of extraordinary talent but there\u2019s no concerted effort to put\nall the datasets that they have together and make them available. It takes a\nlot, it takes a specific dedication to that and that\u2019s really what we hope to\nachieve. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the Centre\u2019s first General Election. What would be your strategy to cover something like this on such a large scale?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s new for us. We have never done 29 states at\nthe same time. Unfortunately some states will get left out, for instance, some\nsmaller states in the North East. But we had to think about how to scale up our\noperations:it\u2019s not only the General Elections; we also have 4 state elections-\ntwo in major states that need to be covered as well. The team has grown, there\nare 10 of us now, everyone contributes in field work and in collecting data.\nWhat we have done is identify a good number of people outside of Ashoka, who\nare either located in states, or are young scholars or PhD students looking to\ndo field work and we provide them with resources to conduct their field work.\nIn exchange, they collect data for us. They are journalists, local politicians,\nand academics or even caste activists, because what we do is a fine grain and\nso we need people who have access to insider information.Mainstream journalists\nusually don\u2019t have access to the level of detail we are looking for. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t have an exact count, but there are\natleast 25-30 people working in data collection overall. I am also using a couple\nof WhatsApp groups with journalists and people who are located in states across\nU.P. and other places. They are a source of help: if I have a blank on a\nparticular case, I can ask \u201cHey what do you know?\u201d and since the WhatsApp group\nis so large, at least one of them will have an instant response. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everything else is pretty much automated, so\nwhenever results are declared, we capture them automatically so there is very\nlittle intervention.  On the day of the\nresults, we will be able to produce analysis very quickly and also make the\ndata available to others. It is pretty unique that within a day of the results,\nthe raw data is available in a clean, usable format, for free. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you foresee in the future, now that TCPD is becoming more prominent and that journalists know about it, that there might be political pressure and political interest in the work that you are doing? <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ashoka has already received a couple\nof complaint letters from prominent personalities whose identity I won\u2019t\nreveal, but they come from both sides. The BJP accuses us of being a Congress\noffice, and some Congress people have complained that the data is used to\ncriticise them. We basically navigate somewhere in between and if the\ncriticisms come from both sides, we are doing fine. We are ferociously non\npartisan. We have our own tastes, likes and dislikes about certain parties, but\nwe make sure that it does not transpire in the data work that we do and in what\nwe publish. To be perfectly honest, some element of subtext is inevitable, even\nin purely data-driven pieces. The data you choose to highlight is itself the\nresult of a choice, which may be political. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are not robots! We try to be fair\nand non partisan, that is the most important thing. We always refuse to work\nwith any political party or individual politician. This does not mean that if\nany party or politician comes to us with some clarification on the data we will\nnot provide it for free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You have spent a large part of your academic life studying Uttar Pradesh and its politics. Could you explain to some of our readers the significance that U.P. holds for the General Elections? <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes we use those banal clich\u00e9d expressions like \u201cThe road to Delhi passes through Lucknow\u201d \u2014 it\u2019s actually true. By virtue of being the largest state in India \u2014 200 million people, 145 million registered voters, 80 seats in the Lok Sabha and a bunch of seats in the Rajya Sabha \u2014 all the parties that have won single majority always had a strong score in UP. Most Prime Ministers have come from UP, even non-UPite PM candidates go to UP to get elected [chuckles]. It\u2019s a state whose history has always been completely mingled with national history and state politics has always been deeply mingled with national politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s an important state also because it concentrates the main forms of political formations that you have in India \u2014 Congress, BJP, caste-based parties, state-based parties, regional parties. All the lines of fractures of Indian politics, both social and political, are present in UP in more exacerbated forms. You have caste politics everywhere but the rule book is on the table, it\u2019s open to all in UP \u2014 it\u2019s very explicit. You have problems of communal politics pretty much everywhere but it\u2019s very salient, very visible in UP. Dalit politics \u2014 you\u2019ve got it. Kisan politics \u2014 you\u2019ve got it. Even western UP is becoming more prosperous, more urbanised \u2014 it\u2019s kind of a microcosm. A very large-scale microcosm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a place where you can observe some of those strong features of Indian politics, in a more explicit and exacerbated form. There is very little denial. When you go to places like Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, or Punjab very often your interlocutors will deny the very existence of caste or tell you that yes, people care about this for marriage but not in politics. When you look at the data from those states, these are states that are super dominated by very small groups. Think about the complete marginalisation of Dalits in public life in Punjab while they represent 36% of the population. No such denial in UP. It\u2019s on the table, it\u2019s very clear. In a way, it\u2019s refreshing \u2014 because you can pass those layers of denial you can shoot straight into the heart of the matter. This is where the Anti-Mandalmobilisations took their most dramatic form. This is where Brahmins immolated themselves. This is where you have Ayodhya, this is where the Babri Masjid was, so it\u2019s a major state for Muslim politics, as well. So, it has everything [chuckles again]. That\u2019s what makes it so interesting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So just a brief look at what\u2019s happening in U.P. What do you make of the alliance building strategies? Most Political Science students would agree that the Congress has often acted as a \u201ccatch all\u201d party and at least with U.P. they can\u2019t really claim a \u201ccore\u201d voter base, so can they really afford to stay apart from the gatbandhan…<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few months ago they contested in elections in Phulpur outside of the alliance. Phulpur outside Allahabad is Jawarhalal Nehru\u2019s former constituency and it got 2%. So how do you go from Nehru\u2019s constituency to 2%? This is pretty much the story of the Congress in U.P. Basically the argument is that the Congress party doesn\u2019t seem to understand it has to choose between building up its organization and try to maximize the most they can get, or concentrate on defeating the BJP by supporting parties and individuals who are in a better position to defeat the BJP. Instead, they are approaching these elections in a very self-centred, even selfish manner. They are basically digging their own grave by being arrogant and by being so unwilling to share political space that is sharing space with meaningful allies. We\u2019re not even talking about power sharing. We\u2019re talking about sharing political space. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s the same thing in Delhi. They rejected the offer of AAP to offer an alliance because \u2018why would we just have three seats?\u2019. Yes, but you may win those seats!Now<\/g> what is going to happen is that they are going to dent into AAP\u2019s support base and get zero, while possibly help the BJP to get seven! How does that make sense? By being greedy, they are paving the way of a win for the BJP in the capital state. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite its limitations and problems, the SP-BSP\nalliance can still do a lot of damage to the BJP in U.P., but the Congress is\ngoing to undermine that effort by cutting into the alliance\u2019s base. On the one\nhand they say \u201cWe will not put candidates against your most prominent leaders\nas a form of courtesy\u201d which reinforces the idea of elite collusion in politics\nthat people are quite disgusted with and they\u2019re basically offering to help the\nin constituencies where the alliance needs it the least, and at the same time\nthey\u2019re poaching the S.P and B.S.P. incumbent MPs because they don\u2019t have\ncandidates of their own and they\u2019re poaching candidates rejected by the\nalliance because of the seat sharing agreement with a result that they are\ngoing to necessary dent into the alliance. So you cannot play nice with one\nhand and backstab them or slap them with the other. It really truly makes no sense\nwhich is why the proposal was dismissed rather unceremoniously, and rightly so.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lastly, apart from the developing centre, and preparing for the elections, what do you make of the current coverage of the elections in the news media?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So far I find it quite good. I see a lot more at\ndata driven pieces than five years ago for sure. There\u2019s been a big\ntransformation. I hope I can say that wehave played the leading role in that\n(chuckle). We know that we have helped some media do that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it\u2019s really nice to see far more data-driven pieces far more empirical pieces. There is a lot of good ground reportage also My advice is to stay away a bit from opinion pieces. Every election, I keep storing and piling them. And once the results are out, most of it is good for the bin. I But ground reporting data pieces are really informative and valuable and I am learning a lot about the elections just you by reading newspapers every day. There\u2019s really good focus on candidates etc. So I\u2026So far actually it is good and I don\u2019t entirely buy the usual doomsday predictions about the media. I don\u2019t watch TV, though, even though I started doing shows, which I always told myself that I wouldn\u2019t do\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2019 with The Edict, is the newspaper’s first foray into reporting elections. With the General Elections around the corner, we speak to Professor Gilles Verniers, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Ashoka University, and Co-Director of Trivedi Centre for Political Data. The Centre, inaugurated in 2015, is now one of the few organisations in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[30,82,286,153,285],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2008"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2008"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2282,"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2008\/revisions\/2282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}