Democracy Asia is a web portal of Lokniti, a Programme for Comparative Democracy which is a research program of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi that seeks to engage with global debates on democracy by initiating empirically grounded theoretical interventions on democracy.
Since 1996 Lokniti has embarked on an ambitious programme of comparative research on the working of democracy in India and South Asia. To pursue this objective a network of scholars has been created, and taken shape, initially in India and more recently across South Asia who have worked, individually and collectively, in examining various aspects and dimensions of democracy. We hope that this body of work will illumine not just what democracy is doing to South Asia but also what South Asia is doing to democracy. Several interesting tentative observations have emerged which we want to make available to a large audience of scholars, activists, scholar-activists and public intellectuals.