This year India goes through its elections. For the last 5 years, the ruling party has been the BJP, a right-wing populist party. The BJP is a hindu nationalist -some might say anti-muslim- party that swept the polls in 2014. Already, five states have elected their states assemblies, with the main left-wing Indian party, the Indian National Congress (INC), picking up three former BJP states, in the "Hindi Heartland -Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh. The other two states, Mizoram and Telangana, elected mainly third party candidates to their assemblies (in this case the Mizo National Front [MNF], and the Telangana Rashtra Samithi [TRS]). This year -in my opinion, thankfully- The BJP is looking much weaker, with the TDP and Shiv Sena pulling out of the National Democratic Alliance.
I honestly hope that the BJP looses the election, due to their generally aggressive tactics in UP, and Modi's close friendship -and I believe, former membership- with/in the RSS, a group known for being the ones who assassinated Ghandiji. I was in Uttarakhand, (and a tiny bit of UP) during Christmas and New Year, and while the BJP has lots of popular support, many places had also put out Congress flags. In UP, the support for the Samajwadi party make that for the INC and BJP look small (at least where I was).