I attended a lecture by Dr. Uday Nirgudkar at Founder’s Day of Maratha Mandir on 4^th March 2024. Nirgudkar is the Group Editor of Marathi News Channel Lokmat 18 on 4^th April 2024, he came as Chief Guest for our Founder Day celebration. While talking about himself he informed the audience that his topic for PhD was Psephology. Dr. Nirgudkar enlightened the audience in his 90 minutes speech about how 2047 would be. He spoke about the milestones of Indian economy from 1947 and a few futuristic milestones till 2047 completing a century of Independent India. The term psephology stayed in my mind and therefore I am writing this article.

Psephology is a branch of political science that deals with the scientific analysis of elections or polls. Psephologist is a Political Researcher. The profile of psephologists and pollsters are alike. Psephologists are in demand during elections to predict the voter’s psychology.

Recently, the Chief election commissioner, Rajiv Kumar announced the Lok Sabha elections 2024 dates. The elections will occur in 7 phases, starting on 19 April and ending on 1 June. The Lok Sabha elections 2024 results will be declared on 4 June.

Understanding political ideas, ideologies, institutions, policies, processes, and behaviour, as well as groups, classes, government, diplomacy, law, strategy, and war are areas very important for a psephologist’s understanding. He studies how people will vote in elections.

Psephologists are the ones who use their talents to calculate the results of “exit polls” in any democratically held election and take a final call on which party would win. Some of the famous psephologists in India are Yogendra Yadav, Prashant Kishor, Dr. Nirgudkar, G.V.L. Narsimha Rao, Prannoy Roy, Ranjit Chib etc.

There is a big difference between opinion polls and exit polls. The results continue to keep swinging during the opinion polls, with many factors at play. But in the case of exit polls, the voting pattern should be well captured. However, if we look at the exit polls across various elections so far, they may show the trend somewhat closely, but they fail to capture the mood in terms of vote share, seats in various regions, and the overall tally for various parties.

Polling, however, is not an exact science. People get swayed by opinions of others. In India in villages the Sarpanch gives his views about which party might help the villagers for beratement; in fact, it’s the rural India which sincerely votes. Urban apathy towards voting is very dangerous. In all elections in urban areas, we see a low voting percentage. Sluggishness, lack of interest, and lack of awareness are some reasons why the urban youth shirk from voting.

Since only a small sample of the population are interviewed, final figures are always subject to a margin of error. The sampling method cannot produce exact figures like those found in the science laboratory. People of a community cannot be subjected to precise analytical measurements. Exactly what accounts for an opinion held by a person or for his personality cannot be secluded and studied as precisely as the elements which make up an opinion poll. 

Prashant Kishor is one of the renowned psephologists known to have played an instrumental role in strategizing in Narendra Modi’s victory in 2014 Lok Sabha Polls. Kishor is also known for guiding JD(U)’s Nitish Kumar to win 2015 assembly poll. Kishor is often credited with reforming the political scenario in the country. He can come up with ideas for the political parties’ agendas. Strategies for fulfilling the agendas, a very strong desire to succeed, reasoning ability. He thinks out of the box. He has an eye for detailing, clear understanding of voters’ mindset to analyse and synthesis information and data. Psephology can be pursued by those who are good in political science and statistics. There are very few universities that teach the program specifically.

Scope:  Psephology is the term derived from the Greek term “Psephos” which means pebble, which the Greeks used as ballots and “Logy” denotes a field of study or academic discipline. The demand for psephologists has raised among various media groups. They are usually contracted by one media group or the other to write relevant columns and articles pertaining to political science or sociology. They are also hired by Political Parties or can also work as freelancers. Currently with elections being organized in every state regularly, psephologists are in demand. Research agencies and institutions also employ psephologists for researching past or historic electoral data. This is critical to establish facts and determine the ‘swing’ and preferences of a certain population.

India doesn’t have an actual post called ‘psephologist’. However, some major parties have in-house analysts who can be called psephologists. Several accomplished media editors, political analysts, and marketing research scientists work as psephologists. But in future, the psephologists will be immense demand. The problem is hardly any Universities teach Psephology as a subject. State Universities must develop a board of studies for preparing a separate syllabus for Psephology.

Writing or scripting a syllabus presents some challenges.  On the one hand, as the first communication with the students, the syllabus needs to convey the excitement and interest of the course, and give the students a sense of how this course will transform them and why they might want to take it.  On the other hand is poses great threat if it is not covered in experiential manner in the higher education.

The syllabus plays a vital role in both learning and teaching. It ensures a fair and impartial understanding between the instructor and students; it also defines policies relating to the course. Policies such as what students would be learning in a course, code of conduct, assessment parameters, books to be referred, pedagogy etc. In short, it provides a roadmap of course.

Both syllabus and curriculum are often confused. While, curriculum is a focus of study, consisting of various courses all designed to reach a particular proficiency or qualification, a syllabus usually contains specific information about the course. It’s an outline and summary of topics to be covered in a training course. It is descriptive often either set out by an exam board.

Human life, however varied, consists in the performance of specific activities.  Education is supposed to prepare us for life. It is suppose to prepare us positively and adequately for the specific activities we choose. The education that we take is required to strengthen us to go out into the world of affairs and help us survive the profession that we choose. And higher education should improve our abilities, aptitudes, habits, approaches and manners to cope in our professional lives. These objectives should govern the syllabus. The course coverage therefore should be definite and exclusive.  The syllabus should be one such that enables the students to have series of experiences sensitizations of the world of affairs.

The progress in higher education all over the world is set the thinkers and advocates considering the following facts about educational purposes the syllabus:

1.    What educational purposes a specific course should seek to attain?

2.   What educational experiences should be provided that is likely to attain these purposes?

3.   How can these educational experiences be effectively organized?

4.   How can we determine whether these purposes are being attained?

Since the real purpose of higher education is not to have the instructor performs certain activities but to bring about significant changes in the students’ views and sensitizing them to the professional world, it becomes important to recognize that any statements of objectives of the curriculum  should be a statement of changes to take place in the students. The syllabus should mention the learning edge; what one already knows and how the course will push the student beyond the realm.

Today, students who come to learn the higher and technical courses complain that the syllabus has not been covered scientifically; it has not guided them sufficiently; the objectives are not met up with; in short they are left and dry. Sad, today syllabuses are not learner-centered. They are teacher centered. We see lot of overlapping of subject matter, unwanted repetition, and sluggish treatments to the topics covered. This tires the student and teacher both.

A review of higher education literature reveals a growing interest in instruction using learning technologies. Have we evaluated the specific needs and questions of the participants?  There is growing mismatch between the new learning technologies and the teacher’s ability to cope with the technologies defeats the syllabus coverage. Many teachers are resistant or unable to use the learning technologies which results in failing the program.

The gap between industry’s needs and the academic community’s aspirations is becoming larger in other words this gap is widening every year. Compulsions of a global market are bound to force industry in general to look afresh at their innovative processes and efforts. This process must be guided by higher and technical education by a complete paradigm shift from a simple capital intensive trading to a technology driven entrepreneurial one. In today’s world technology is driving our lives. New technologies are certainly part of the changes which in turn have changed the processes. We cannot afford to be cocooned in our creations and drag them on for our lives; our higher educational processes hence would need swift changes one of them is changing the syllabus after regular intervals and second regular review of them.

Academic integrity and honesty are essential in the development of a professional education syllabus. The professional courses are generally excellent at teaching the numbers and analysis of risk with mathematical tools to evaluate the time value of money etc. They should prepare students to live with risk, balancing professional and personal life, fairness in life, that selling right is listening first, and solving people’s problems and empathies with them. Most importantly each higher education program should emphasize first on execution than only on making strategies.

Tips for effectiveness of syllabus:

• Communicate with articulation course learning outcomes.
• List major topics the course will cover.
• Provide a list of reading materials (briefly annotated).
• List textbooks, reference books, journals and magazines and other course materials and where to find them.
• List how the course would be graded course requirements such as assignments, exams, attendance, participation, etc.
• Provide a detailed schedule, weekly or daily. Include what will be covered, assignment and test dates, learning activities such as group work or presentations, guest speakers, field trips, library information sessions, etc.
• Consider using graphics, pictures etc as these give a friendlier approach.
• Last but not the least, keep a friendly tone, and let your syllabus not startle the students.