Smokescreen Report Released: New Study Examines Electoral Narratives, Institutional Power, and Democratic Risk in India

Smokescreen Report Released: New Study Examines Electoral Narratives, Institutional Power, and Democratic Risk in India

The Smokescreen Research Report on Politics in India
The Managed Illusion of Indian Democracy, Electronic Voting Machines, and Institutional Capture

By Rakesh Raman
New Delhi | January 23, 2026

An independent research report titled Smokescreen has been released, presenting a comprehensive analysis of India’s contemporary electoral landscape and the mechanisms through which democratic scrutiny is increasingly displaced by political narratives, institutional opacity, and managed public consent.

Authored by journalist and researcher Rakesh Raman, the 60-page report examines how repeated electoral outcomes since 2014 are sustained through a layered political environment in which welfare messaging, nationalism, media amplification, opposition management, and controlled dissent operate together to obscure deeper questions of democratic accountability.

Rather than focusing on individual events or election cycles, Smokescreen frames India’s electoral process as a broader “narrative architecture” — where attention is systematically diverted away from electoral transparency and institutional responsibility toward emotive, identity-driven, and survival-oriented political messaging.

The report also analyzes the role of constitutional bodies, grievance mechanisms, courts, media organizations, and cultural industries in normalizing contested outcomes while marginalizing scrutiny. Special attention is given to leadership centralization, the politics of impunity, and the transformation of dissent into performative or symbolic resistance.

According to the author, the objective of the report is documentation rather than advocacy. “The aim is to place patterns, structures, and unanswered questions on record — for journalists, researchers, legal experts, and democratic observers — without prescribing conclusions,” the report notes.

Archiving on Zenodo

The Smokescreen Research Report 2026 has been officially archived on Zenodo—a globally recognized research repository developed by the European OpenAIRE initiative and managed by CERN. This ensures worldwide visibility and academic traceability of its findings.

The report is freely available for access, download, and citation via its permanent Digital Object Identifier (DOI). By securing international archiving, the report offers a credible reference point for global research on the state of democracy and politics in India.

The full report is embedded below for readers, researchers, and institutions to examine in detail.

Download: You can click here to download the report, which is also presented below in digital format.