John Oliver's maiden HBO Last Week Tonight show was very interesting.
John Oliver covered the ongoing Indian Elections, the largest elections globally to date. With 814 Million eligible voters, the fight is between the Center left incumbent Indian National Congress (INC) and the center-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). To play spoilsport is a dozen regional parties that are not allied with either of the two national parties.
The fight is for 543 parliament seat in the powerful Lok Sabha (People Council). Lok Sabha is the equivalent of House of Representatives but in India, is more powerful than the upper council (Rajya Sabha, the equivalent of Senate)
In the outgoing Parliament, INC had 206 seats and formed the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) with other parties for a total of 260 seats. They had external support of 70 additional members from regional parties. In this election, BJP and their alliance - National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is widely expected to win highest seats and there are few opinion polls that talk about them achieving simple majority by themselves. BJP has nominated Narendra Modi to be their Prime Ministerial candidate and is very controversial for his role (or lack thereof) in the 2002 Gujarat riots. Modi is popular for his governance, image and industrial transformation of Mahatma Gandhi's home state and is promising inclusive growth as part of his agenda.
Indian national (and to certain extent) politics is fragmented with regional parties having a higher proportion of influence than the seats that they hold. Hence, corruption, horse trading and switching between parties is very common.
That in a nutshell is what you need to know about Indian politics and the elections.
A better way to educate yourselves is to watch John Oliver below the fold.
From Youtube. A riot act always: