Citizen Raj: Surjit Bhalla's book on polls offers a platter of tasty facts

His treatment of developments in all but the last two decades is cursory and at times not convincing

Yogendra Yadav says, “Like tea, cinema or cricket, there is something about elections that makes it appear like an age old Indian passion.” In this season of general elections and nightly thrillers from the Indian Premier League, we election junkies couldn’t be happier than pigs in a pile of warm s**t. There couldn’t be a better time for data-maven-turned-psephologist Surjit Bhalla to present his analyses of the 16 Indian general elections to date and his forecast for the 17th presently underway.

Bhalla’s coverage of a vast canvas from independent India’s choice of democracy (with universal franchise, which he does not