There is an inescapable lure of nostalgia when reflecting on elections with someone who, over the last 40 years, has almost become a national habit as India tracked, dissected and predicted poll results. In doing all this, Prannoy Roy has worn his scholarship lightly in TV studios. No mean feat for a man who collaborated with legendary Oxford political scientist Sir David Butler and economist Ashok Lahiri way back in the 1980s for mainstreaming psephology in India.
Besides election broadcasting, it was on the pages of news magazine India Today and later in their book India Decides (1984) that Roy and his colleagues blended rigour with accessibility while analysing elections in India.
