REVIEW 75 The present volume is a review of such election and voting behaviour studies in India between 1952 and 1972. It exhaustively evaluates the efforts made by both Indian and foreign scholars with reference to their theoretical orientation, methodological rigour and substantive focus. This itself is a commendable enterprise. But mare than that, in the light of evaluation of the studies and analysis of opinion of some interested social scientists, the authors have evolved a "blueprint for election and voting betiavi-our studies to be conducted in the future55 (p 12) so as "to ensure that (these) studies in the future are better planned than what they have been so far in substantive, theoretical and methodological terms" (p v). Theory and Methodology The major suggestions are obviously in respect of theory, methodology and substantial coverage. The authors note that "serious thought has got to be given to theoretical/conceptual concerns which need to be built into the research design itself . . . (and) the framework should be so operationalized as to take note of the Indian reality55 (pp 143-141). Considering the type of research in political science, this is a sound suggestion. But to a common student of .social science it appears a simple commonsense statement without any substance. Such a feeling becomes striking when one sees that though the authors consider that "there is a great potential for building up a theory of election politics in India on the basis of available literature55 (p 148), they themselves have failed to guide how to use the available data, which are collected without knowing their significance. In fact, the indispensable precondition for constructing a theory of political phenomena^ that is, the determination of human behaviour which ensures that it will be oriented in a certain direction within the limits established by society and that it will re-occur under similar conditions irrespective of space and time, cannot be conceived from the various unplanned election studies. Thus the attempts in that direction may not yield the desired results. Leaving that aside, the authors are keen to Indianize the theories of voting behaviour in termsi of multifactoral approach and middle range theory, all that implicitly within the purview of western political theory. Nevertheless, the authors make a concession to Marxist scholars within the space of one page in the whole volume. To quote:"We may also add here that efforts at theoretical orientation should also take note of Marxist-Leninist framework and, mare particularly, of class as an analytical category55 (p 144). This needs to be looked into in the context of their earlier observation: "The