We are pleased to announce the 2nd Seminar Series on Governance, Institutions, and Sustainability” jointly hosted by the Centre for Political Economy and Institutional Studies and by the Birkbeck Responsible Business Centre, within the Birkbeck Business School.

In our rapidly evolving world, the intricate web connecting governance, institutions, and sustainability has become increasingly prominent. We invite scholars, researchers, and practitioners to enhance this very important debate and to join us in exploring the profound intertwining of these critical elements at our upcoming seminar series.

Disillusionment with income as a measure of wellbeing has led researchers to alternative measures that are broader and focus on outcomes. Amartya Sen’s pioneering contribution focuses on capabilities to live a healthy and rewarding life. Deaton, among others, espouses a measure of wellbeing called life evaluation/satisfaction that aggregates components of wellbeing, such as economic status, health, family circumstances and even human and political rights, and we use this measure of life evaluation here. As there is no study of trust in the present Indian government’s National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and life evaluation, this study aims to fill this gap, using the Gallup World Poll survey for India covering the period 2018–21. As trust in the NDA is endogenous, 2SLS and Lewbel IV estimators have been used. As the 2SLS estimates satisfy the relevance and exclusion conditions for the instruments, we rely on these estimates. Our analysis, controlling for other covariates, confirms robustly that trust in the NDA determines life evaluation. As trust in the NDA has decreased over the period analysed, so has life evaluation. If the oppressive and brutal policies of the NDA in pursuit of a Hindu nation are not checked, the cumulative loss of trust in the NDA and life evaluation may jeopardise democracy.