Elections without money impractical: Authors of Costs of Democracy

From the perspective of the BJP, one of the ancillary benefits of demonetisation was to disadvantage smaller, regional parties who might have an outsize reliance on cash, said the authors

Costs of Democracy is a new book on money and politics in India. Devesh Kapur has just been appointed Starr Foundation South Asia Studies Professor and is Asia Programs Director at the Paul H Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University and Milan Vaishnav is Senior Fellow and Director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, have put the book together. They tell Aditi Phadnis how India's democracy is financed.

Your latest edited volume, Costs of Democracy, is about to be published. Tell us a little bit about the book.

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