Can genes explain how India votes? That question stood at the centre of an unusual evening in Delhi, where distinguished guests came together to discuss one book and a difficult question about democracy. The occasion was the launch of Ratios in the Republic, authored by Dr Devi Prasad Semwal, at the India International Centre in New Delhi. The book examines voting patterns across India’s 18 General Elections, from 1951-52 to 2024, and explores whether recurring patterns in electoral results could be studied through an interaction between biology and environment. The discussion brought together people from very different professional backgrounds, giving the book’s central proposition a wide range of perspectives.
What Is the Book Asking?
India has experienced enormous changes since independence. Political parties have changed, leaders have come and gone, social conditions have shifted, and the country has experienced major historical transformations. Against this changing background, Dr Semwal observes that certain aggregate electoral patterns appear to recur.
This leads to the book’s central question. Could some part of this apparent regularity be connected with relatively stable human behavioural predispositions? The book approaches the question through the relationship between biology and environment.
Its proposition requires an important distinction. It does not suggest that a particular gene determines support for a political party. It also does not suggest that genetics mechanically determines how an individual votes.
Instead, the book considers whether genetically influenced behavioural predispositions, interacting with social, cultural, economic and political environments, could contribute to patterns that become visible when millions of individual choices are considered together. The question, therefore, extends beyond genetics. It also involves electoral behaviour, the environment, society, and how individual decisions appear when aggregated across a large population.
A Dais Representing Different Fields
The chief guest of the evening was Padma Bhushan Shri Ram Bahadur Rai, a prominent figure in Indian journalism, literature and public life. Other distinguished guests included Justice Poonam A. Bamba, former Judge of the Delhi High Court and present Chairperson of the Police Complaints Authority, Delhi, former IAS Hem Kumar Pande, eminent geneticist Professor Deepak Pental and former IPS Arun Kumar.
The Author Behind the Question
The man of the evening was Dr Devi Prasad Semwal, whose academic and professional background brings together biology, public administration and electoral experience. His career as a former Indian Revenue Service officer also brought him closer to the electoral processes. As an Election Commission Observer for parliamentary constituencies, he gained direct exposure to elections and voter behaviour. These different experiences eventually came together in Ratios in the Republic.
An Idea Entering Public Discussion
At its heart, Ratios in the Republic asks about the relationship between individual behaviour and large-scale electoral patterns. Eighteen General Elections provide the historical field Dr Semwal examines. Biology, environment and human behaviour provide the wider framework through which he approaches the question.
Whether the proposed relationship can withstand further research and testing remains open for discussion. The book places that question before readers and researchers, inviting them to examine how individual choices, human behaviour and electoral patterns may intersect across the long history of India’s democracy.
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