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This chapter discusses the paradigm shift in Indian politics beyond the realm of electoral hegemony. The historical mandate of 2014 was the watershed moment which has resulted in the restructuring of the party system and the emergence of a new ideological framework in the public sphere. The BJP succeeded in breaching linguistic, cultural and state barriers by creating an All India Imagination, this marks the dawn of the second dominant party system since the Indian National Congress in 1989. This vision of New India with Modi as the central force spells trouble for the state parties. The potent combination of development, Hindutva and nationalism shapes this new hegemony. Paradoxically, only an electoral upset can bring the BJP’s march to hegemony to a halt.

This paper is an attempt to investigate the multiple crises facing the Maratha community of Maharashtra. A dominant, intermediate peasantry caste that assumed control of the state's political apparatus in the fifties, the Marathas ordinarily resided politically within the Congress fold and thus facilitated the continued domination of the Congress party within the state. However, Maratha politics has been in flux over the past two decades or so. At the formal level, this dominant community has somehow managed to retain power in the electoral arena (Palshikar-Birmal, 2003)-though it may be about to lose it. And yet, at the more intricate levels of political competition, the long surviving, complex patterns of Maratha dominance stand challenged in several ways. One, the challenge is of loss of Maratha hegemony and consequent loss of leadership of the non-Maratha backward communities, the OBCs. The other challenge pertains to the inability of different factions of Marathas to negotiate peace and ensure their combined domination through power sharing. And the third was the internal crisis of disconnect between political elite and the Maratha community which further contribute to the loss of hegemony. Various consequences emerged from these crises. One was simply the dispersal of the Maratha elite across different parties. The other was the increased competitiveness of politics in the state and the decline of not only the Congress system, but of the Congress party in Maharashtra. The third was a growing chasm within the community between the neo-rich and the newly impoverished. These developments resulted into the discourse of backwardness that dominated the politics of the Maratha community in the more recent times. Very crudely, the claim that the community is backward constitutes a response to internal fragmentation and stratification as much as to processes of urbanization and liberalization. Therefore, the post-1980 developments need to be seen not merely as the trajectory of one caste but by situating them at the cusp of dynamics of democratic politics and state's economy, some trends in political economy of caste may also be detected.

, we placed before the readers our first issue of SIP. That issue has received a warm welcome from colleagues based in various institutions in India and abroad. We are planning to increase the periodicity of the journal and bring out three issues in 2015. We look forward to receiving a steady stream of submissions to support this decision. On 18 July 2013, the first issue was formally launched at a function at the India International Centre, Delhi at the hands of Professor Mrinal Miri, renowned philosopher, MP (Rajya Sabha) and Chairperson of the Board of Governors, CSDS. The first copy of the journal was given to Professor Rajni Kothari in appreciation of his contribution to the study of Indian politics. A panel discussion was held on this occasion on the topic 'Doing Political Science in India'. Nivedita Menon, Sudipta Kaviraj and Yogendra Yadav participated in the discussion. Professor Rajeev Bhargava chaired the panel discussion. SIP believes that doing political science in India and studying 'Indian politics' are closely interlinked. Also, SIP seeks to connect itself to the various processes that aim at rejuvenating the discipline of political science in Indian academia. Just as the sections on 'Teaching-Learning Political Science' and 'Notes on Methods' are instances of that effort, the panel discussion on the occasion of the launch too was an effort to start off a discussion on this issue. Nivedita Menon argued for a more critical and interdisciplinary approach to studying politics and underscored that analysis of power and power relations was and should be the central concern of the study of politics. Sudipta Kaviraj pointed out that history of ideas and their evolution from pre-colonial period must be an essential component of political science as it could strengthen our understanding of the contemporary. Yogendra Yadav emphasized that a more nuanced understanding of political science would be possible through a critical study of Indian politics. Rajeev Bhargava exhorted the journal to balance the tasks of responding to the immediate and making sense of the long-term trends. These views were in consonance with the idea of 'Indian politics' propounded by us in the Introduction to the first issue of SIP. As more and more college-going undergraduate students turn to the study of political science and as the discipline attracts more and more researchers, there is an urgent need to revisit our understanding of the discipline, reframe the course structure for both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees and redefine research agenda of political science in India. Through its pages, SIP hopes to contribute to this challenging process and invites colleagues to support this endeavour by way of their research writings and response to the papers published in SIP. This second issue, like the first one, through the articles being published here, addresses ideas (on the links between history and politics), institutions (delimitation of electoral constituencies, 'decline' of parliament and party system) and processes (Ka...