Can Free Food Attract Attendees to Political Meetings? An Analysis of Attendance Buying to Political Meetings Using Multi-method Approaches with a Particular Emphasis on Scheduled Caste

Vote-buying has become such a frequent kind of electoral ‘malpractice’ in India that it has become conspicuous in election culture. Despite this, we know very little about how it operates, its consequences, and how voters perceive it. While there is a significant body of literature on vote-buying in Indian elections, the research focuses specifically on attendance buying and its impact on diverse demographic groups and caste categories. By examining attendance buying, the research adds to the existing literature on vote-buying tactics, which can inform future studies and policy interventions to reduce electoral malpractice. We investigate and add to the contemporary literature on vote buying by analysing attendance buying and how it relates to diverse perspectives like low income, age, gender and education or regarding it, focusing on two different categories of caste, that is, dominant and Scheduled Caste. We conducted a survey experiment in the North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal to seek the effect of attendance-buying in the municipalities of Ashokenagar. The focus is on attending middle-sized political meetings rather than smaller meetings, where we thought its efficacy was prominent because of the number of free food and drinks. We found that the effect of the free foods and drinks over the larger meetings is more prominent than in local-level meetings. Our survey could not state that Scheduled Castes voluntarily engage at local-level meetings regardless of free food and drinks.