India's government recently announced its decision to complete the country's next national census--its first since 2011--by 2027. The move paves the way for a highly-anticipated delimitation, or electoral redistricting, which could radically reallocate political power across India's states. Political scientists Louise Tillin and Milan Vaishnav will discuss the implications of this impending move on federal equity, democratic representation, and the trade-offs between population-based representation and regional political stability.

Milan Vaishnav is a senior fellow and director of the South Asia Program and the host of the Grand Tamasha podcast at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His primary research focus is the political economy of India, and he examines issues such as corruption and governance, state capacity, distributive politics, and electoral behavior. He also conducts research on the Indian diaspora.

Louise Tillin is Professor of Politics at King’s India Institute, King’s College London. Her latest books are Making India Work: The Development of Welfare in a Multi-Level Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2025) and Deconstructing India’s Democracy (Orient Blackswan, 2025) edited with Rob Jenkins. She has written widely on issues concerning democracy, federalism and social welfare policy in India.