Tanay Sukumar

While nearly four in every five urban Indians plan to vote, a majority don't see the next five years producing a major turnaround on poverty, unemployment and communal relations.

Electoral bonds had been a key funding instrument for political parties in recent years, but the anonymity of the donations faced legal challenges, culminating in the Supreme Court's decision last month to quash the scheme

The 2019 elections saw the highest ever number of political parties in the fray, and the voter turnout among women caught up with that of men.

The now-scrapped electoral bonds scheme did away with norms on how much a company could donate, how it could donate and how it needed to report such donations. That spurred small nondescript firms into action.

The BJP received nearly half the funds received under the now-scrapped electoral bonds scheme

How did loyalty play out in electoral bonds, and which companies played people-pleasers with donations to several parties? Here's what a Mint analysis shows

The secret lies in wealth. The wealth gap between candidates and eventual winners has grown sharply in the last four Lok Sabha elections, showing that polls are swinging more and more in favour of richer candidates who have the financial clout to contest and win

In 2023-24, India was on top for 10 out of 12 months, and its average monthly score in 2023-24 was the highest in the EM league table.

Just 13 MPs have been elected unopposed since 1962. On the flip side, there have been two seats where more than 400 candidates contested. But most forfeited their deposits.

Among job seekers, around 24% of those surveyed said they expected a 10-15% salary hike, while another 24% expected a more than 20% hike. This shows job seekers and employees were hopeful of even bigger hikes than employers expect to give this year.