Sarthak Bagchi is an Assistant Professor at the School of Arts and Sciences, Ahmedabad University. He teaches courses on Democracy, Indian Political Processes and India's democratic transformation. His research is primarily focused on clientelism and patronage politics, comparative politics, Indian state politics, Populism, Informal Politics and Identity Politics. He also writes on politics for general audiences in The Wire, The Indian Express and The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy and appears as a political commentator for television news channel, NDTV india. Sarthak has also worked as a journalist with TV news channel, News X, before entering academics. Sarthak has previously worked with KITLV (Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies), Leiden and Göttingen University, Germany as researcher and post-doctoral researcher respectively.

Sarthak Bagchi worked as a doctoral research scholar at the Institute for Area Studies, Leiden University, in the Netherlands. For his doctoral dissertation, Sarthak has conducted a comparative study of clientelistic politics in the assembly elections of Bihar and Maharashtra. Trained as a political scientist from the University of Hyderabad, where he did his M.A.  and M. Phil. in the Department of Political Science, Sarthak has been a keen observer of electoral politics, party systems and state politics in India. 

 

His research interests lie in the topics of patronage politics, populism, electoral politics, state-society relations, party politics, informal politics and comparative politics. He has also conducted research to understand politics in other countries such as Turkey, Indonesia and the Netherlands. In Indian State politics, Sarthak looks at the extent and prevalance of patronage natworks and clientelistic politics in different Indian states, using methods of comparative analysis. His work uses ethnographic methods to follow and study the mediation and manouvering of informal networks of political actors, especially in the ambit of election campaigns to understand the different ways in which politicians try to connect with their voters.  Besides clientelistic networks and Informal politics, Sarthak is also interested in the topics of youth and politics, regional political economy and rural local governances through a mix of quantitative and qualitative study of panchayati raj Institutions in Indian states. 

• Bagchi, S. 2019. “Re-evaluating Maratha Politics in Maharashtra post 2014 Assembly elections” in Kumar, Ashutosh and Sisodiya, Yatindra Singh (eds.) Electoral Politics in Indian States: 2014 Elections and After. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan. 270 – 287. 
• Bagchi, S. 2016. “The Political Campaign”. Seminar: The Bihar Ballot. Issue 678, February 2016. 25-30. 
• Bagchi, S and Berenschot, Ward (co-author). 2019. “Comparing Brokers: Informal networks and access to public services in Bihar and Gujarat”. Journal of Contemporary Asia. London: Routledge. DOI: 10.1080/00472336.2019.1605535 
• Bagchi, S. 2019. “An Ethnographic Exploration of clientelism in India”. Sage Research Methods case in Politics and International Relations. London: Sage Publications, London. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781526497444 
• Bagchi, S, Ratnam, M and Chacko, MaryAnn. 2020. "Protesting in Ahmedabad: Between Resistance and Restrictions" in PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review. September 2020.  
• Bagchi, S. 2021. "Gauravpant Mishra" in Bjorkman, Lisa (ed.) Bombay Brokers. Durham: Duke University Press. 322-328. 

• Democracy
• Populism
• Indian Political process
• Party systems and Comparative Politics
• Elections and informal politics
• Ethnography and Qualitative Research Methods

• 2018: SSRC post-doctoral Fellowship as a Summer Research scholar at the Global Studies platform at University of Gottingen, May-July 2018.
• 2017: KITLV Conference Travel grant under the ‘Clients to Citizens’ Project for participating in the BASAS Annual Conference, University of Nottingham, April 19-21, 2017.
• 2016: Leiden University Fund (LUF) conference participation grant for the Development Studies Association (DSA) conference, Oxford University, September 2016
• 2016: Brown University International Advanced Research Institute (BIARI) travel grant for participating in the BIARI summer school 2016
• 2016: Brown University International Advanced Research Institute (BIARI) travel grant for participating in the BIARI summer school 2016
• 2015: EECURI-LSE research grant for conducting fieldwork in Bihar Assembly election 2015
• 2014: EECURI research grant for conducting fieldwork in Maharashtra Assembly election 2014
• 2013: International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) conference participation grant for the Annual Nordic Institute for Asian Studies (NIAS) conference in the University of Southern Denmark, November 2013

Op-ed and Public Policy:

• Making of a V.I.P: Understanding Small Caste-Based Political Parties in India, The India Forum, September 6, 2019. 
• The importance of being Kanhaiya Kumar, Long Read: LSE blogs. London School of Economics: South Asia Centre. April, 17, 2019.
• Comparing election campaign in India and Netherlands titled, “From Social Media Use to Anti- Islamic Rhetoric, Similarities in Indian and Dutch Election Campaigns”, External Affairs section, thewire.in, March 27, 2017. 
• “Threads of Rakshabandhan: How Politicians Use Festivals to boost Electoral Patronage”, Politics section, thewire.in, June 18, 2016. 
• ‘Will to Power, Actually’, Indian Express, opinion-editorial page, December 11, 2015.
• “A Tale of Two Campaigns”, Bihar Assembly Elections, The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy, October 31, 2015. 
• “Loud and Unclear: The choice between development and dignity for voters in Bihar”, The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy, October 6, 2015 

Television Appearances: 

• Appeared as a panelist on a panel discussion on Bihar Election outcomes on NDTV India, primetime show on November 9, 2015. 
• Appeared as a panelist on a panel discussion on Dutch Parliamentary election results and the victory of green left party on NDTV India, primetime show on March 21, 2017. 
• Appeared as a panelist on a panel discussion on French Presidential Elections and the victory of Macron over right wing populist Marine Le Pen on NDTV India, primetime show on May 8, 2017. 

• Delivered a Guest Lecture on ‘Electoral Politics in India’ for the bachelors’ students at the Department of Political Science, St. Francis Degree College for Women, Begumpet, Hyderabad, on 22nd January, 2019. 
• Delivered the CeMIS summer colloquium lecture 2018 titled, “Can clientelism be Democratic? A view from Shops of Power in India.” at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies, Georg-Augustus University, Göttingen. 
• Delivered the Brown Bag research seminar titled, “Can clientelism be Democratic? A study of Two Assembly Elections in India” in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sabancci University, Istanbul, on 5th October, 2017. 
• Delivered a lunch lecture titled, “What it takes to Enter Elections? The political economy of candidate nomination in Indian Elections” organized by the Leiden Political Economy Group (L- PEG) Lecture series, on 20th September, 2017.