In Assam, the Cost of Winning is Rising and Democracy is Paying for It |
Listen to this article:
In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald writes of a world where wealth does not just buy comfort, it buys entry, proximity, and power. Assam’s 2026 assembly elections suggest something similar about contemporary politics: wealth is no longer incidental to democracy; it is increasingly its entry ticket.
The numbers are difficult to ignore. Eighty-five per cent of Assam’s MLAs are crorepatis even though only 39% of candidates fall in that category. This is not merely a statistic; it is a pattern. And patterns, in politics, reveal structure.
Begin with the electoral outcome itself. The BJP’s emphatic victory, 82 seats in a 126-member assembly, consolidates its dominance in the state. But beneath this consolidation lies a quieter transformation. Assam’s political field is not just being reorganised along ideological or organisational lines; it is being reshaped along economic ones.
Data source: Association for Democratic Reforms.
Before turning to the figures, it is worth noting that changes in the composition of legislatures often unfold slowly, reflecting broader social shifts. What we see here, however, is far sharper. Table 1 tells us that the proportion of crorepati MLAs has risen from 37% in 2011 to 85% in 2026. This is not a gradual transition; it marks a clear structural break. Within a decade, the assembly has moved from being socio-economically mixed to overwhelmingly affluent.
Data source: Association for Democratic Reforms.
Before looking at the party-wise figures, it is important to recognise that this concentration of wealth is not confined to any one political formation. Ninety percent of BJP MLAs are crorepatis (Table 2), while the Congress stands at 74%, and regional parties like the BPF and AGP also exhibit similarly high concentrations. Even smaller parties report near-total dominance of wealthy candidates. The pattern, then, is not ideological, it cuts across party systems.
What explains this? Part of the answer lies in how Assam’s politics has evolved over the past decade. The BJP’s consolidation has been built on a broad coalition, upper castes, sections of OBCs, tea tribes, and segments of........