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My name is Satyaki Barua, and I'm from a town in West Bengal called Chandannagore. I'm doing my PhD in political science at the University of Hyderabad, India, and I have completed my master's in political science at the same university. I work on party organisation to understand party institutionalisation patterns and networks that culminate locally. My research aims to nuance the existing assumptions of a weak party thesis and show how parties use innovative methods to strengthen and build party organisations in India. Through my work, I also aim to look at questions of professionalisation of politics, its impact on the working of party machinery and the mobilisation of the political parties at the local level. Before this, I had worked on understanding Indian political dynasties, their expansion and survival in electoral democracies. I have conducted extensive fieldwork around the districts of West Bengal, India, for my research. Besides these specific interests, my disciplinary interests also revolve around political anthropology, political philosophy and sociology.
Sweet Excess: Crafting Mishti in Bengal (Routledge, 2025) by Ishita Dey is an ethnographic work on excess. Based on a decade-long fieldwork of a singl…