Alyssa Ayres is Assistant Director for South and Central Asia Policy Programs at the Asia Society, where she has worked since 1998. In this capacity, she is responsible for the research, design, fund-raising, implementation, and outreach of programs concerning the foreign policy and politics of South Asia and for the development of a new program area focused on Central Asia. Ayres has helped establish the Society's presence as a neutral forum for discussion and exchange on U.S.-Iran relations-one of the only such fora in the United States. She is Project Director of the joint Asia Society-Council on Foreign Relations Independent Task Force on India and South Asia.

Philip Oldenburg is Associate Director of the Southern Asian Institute at Columbia University, where he also teaches in the political science department. He has edited or coedited eight previous volumes in the India Briefing series and is the author of the Asia Society's Asian Update "The Thirteenth Election of India's Lok Sabha (House of the People)." His current research is on the grassroots foundations of state legitimacy in India.