POLITICAL PARTIES

Political party forms an important component of a political system.

A political party is an institution which consists of leaders, followers,

policies and programmes.
• Its followers may have formal membership of the party or may
support it without being formal members. There are different parties.
• Parties can be differentiated on the bases of leaders, policies and
programmes, ideologies and internal functioning.
• The principal feature of a political party which distinguishes it from
other organizations is that its main purpose is to capture power.
• Political party is only one of so many social agents associated with or
responsible for political participation.
• There are other agents such as voluntary organisations, institutional
groups and socio-cultural communities.
• Political parties are the important links between individuals, state
and society.
• Political parties provide the crucial connection between social
process and policy-makers, and influence debates and policies on
issues affecting the interests of various social groups in a political
system.
TYPES OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN INDIA

There is a criterion given by the Election Commission of India to

categorize the political parties as national, state/regional and registered/
unrecognized parties.

1. National Party

According to the Election Commission, for being considered as a

national party a political party should atleast have one of the
following qualifications:

i. It has to win a minimum of two percent of the seats in the Lok

Sabha from atleast three different States;

ii. In general elections, the party must manage to win six percent
of the votes and win at least four Lok Sabha seats;

iii. It should be recognised as a state-level party in four or more

states.

Examples: In 2020, there were seven national Parties in India: Indian

National Congress (INC), Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Bahujan Samaj
Party (BSP), Communist Party of India (CPI), Communist Party of India-
Marxist (CPI(M)), Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and All India
Trinamool Congress.

2. State Party/Regional Party

Election Commission does not use the concept of regional party.

Instead, it uses the notion of state party.

However, in academic discourse and general parlance, state and

regional parties are used interchangeably. But there are differences in
ways the Election Commission and academic discourse define state
and regional parties.
 The election commission identifies a regional party on the basis of
its electoral performance in a number of states.

Academic discourse defines a regional or state party in terms of its

policies, activities, support-bases and leadership in specific regions
or states.

According to EC, to be considered as state party, a party should have

one of the qualifications to be acknowledged as a state party:

i) It must have engaged in political activity for at least five

years;

ii) It must have won either four percent of the seats in a

general election or three percent in a state election;

iii) In addition, it must have had the support of six percent of

the votes cast;

iv) The status of a state party can still be bestowed upon an

entity even if it fails to win any seats in the Lok Sabha or
the Assembly if it manages to win at least eight per cent of
the total votes cast in the entire state.

In 2020, there are 36 recognized state parties in India that represent

their respective states.

Some of the recognised state parties include Aam Aadmi Party

(AAP), All India Anna Dravida MunnetraKazhagam (AIADMK),
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Biju Janata Dal(BJD), Janata Dal
(United) JD(U), Rashtriya Janata Dal(RJD), Samajwadi Party (SP).

3. Registered / Unrecognized Party

Registered party is a party that is neither recognised as a state nor a

national party, but it is registered with the election commission. It is
also called unrecognised party. At present, there are more than 2000
registered parties in India.
POLITICAL PARTIES: FUNCTIONS AND ROLE

Political parties are essential for the proper functioning of representative

democracy. They perform vital functions in every political system.

The functions performed by the political parties, especially in the context of

India, are as under:
• They nominate candidates during elections (to act as people’s
representatives in the legislature);
• They campaign to obtain support for their candidates in the elections;

• They place objectives and programmes before the voters through

their manifestos;
• Those securing the majority in elections form the government and
enact and implement the policies;
• Those not in power form opposition and keep a constant check on
the government;
• They form opposition when they are in minority in the legislature
and constantly put pressure on the government for proper
governance;
• They educate people and help in formulating and shaping public
opinion;
• They articulate peoples’ demands and convey them to the
government; and
• They provide a linkage between people and governmental
institutions.
In India political parties have been performing the above-mentioned
functions quite effectively since independence. They have made
representative governments in India both possible and successful for over
past seven decades.

They provide effective links between the citizens and the governments on
the one hand, and the electorates and their representatives on the other.
They try to cater to people’s demands on public matters, and mobilize
political participation.

Elections without parties would have almost been impossible. In fact,

democracy needs strong and sustainable political parties with the
capacity to represent citizens and provide policy choices that
demonstrate their ability to govern for the public good.

The experience of functioning of political parties in India during the last

several decades indicates that by and large they have been instrumental in
shaping public opinion, creating political awareness, and imparting
political education to the people.

They have contributed towards making the institutions and processes of

government truly democratic and people centric. We can, therefore, say
that democracy in India has been strengthened by a competitive and
multi-party system.

As India has a multiparty system where coalition governments have been

a norm, the regional and registered parties have been playing a crucial role,
especially after the late 1980s, in formation of coalition of government both
in the centre and the states.

Regional Parties are becoming important determining factors in electoral

politics. Regional parties represent the aspirations of people at state or
local levels.
Rajni Kothari’s Perspective on Politics in India and The Congress
System
• Rajni Kothari, in the year 1970, published a book with the title
‘Politics in India’. The book was inspired by the System Theory
developed by David Easton and the concept of power as developed
by Robert Dahl.
• It described the political processes in India and their impact on
Indian society.
• Its opening lines are manifesto-like, putting politics at the centre-
stage of human activity and treating politics as a force of nature.
• He examined issue from the functional point of view.

• In a plural society like India, with cleavages and divisions both on

horizontal and vertical lines, the western models to assess political
development are often inadequate and that makes him search for a
new model to understand the complex nature if Indian polity, by
analyzing the key concepts like ‘kind of political parties and interest
groups’, ‘social and national integration’ and ‘infrastructure of the
society’.
• He successfully showed the response of traditional society to
modernization. In Indian society, there had always been a secular
element and it survived to this day due to its ‘cultural unity’.
• Starting with the search of factors in nation-building and the meaning
of political development, especially in India, he identifies
“administrative-governmental process” with the “political process”
as factors of development in India.
• It is one of his views, that the greatest failure of India throughout its
long history was its inability to function politically, to construct a
viable political authority and that it failed to build a strong centre.
 • He observed that, “factionalism and caste cleavages, patterns of
alignment and realignment amongst the various strata, and a
continuous striving for social mobility have always been prominent
features of the caste system.”
• He also says that “the unavailability of a nation-wide and united
opposition party or parties forced the leadership of the Congress
Party to admit to its organization an active and virulent
factionalism without any significant reference to ideological or
pragmatic issues.”

The Congress ‘System’

Rajni Kothari writes:

• The Indian system can be described as a system of one party
dominance (which, it may be noted, is very different from what is
generally known as a one party system).
• It is a competitive party system but one in which the competing parts
play rather dissimilar roles.
• It consists of a party of consensus and parties of pressure.

• The latter function on the margin and, indeed, the concept of a

margin of pressure is of great importance in this system.
• Inside the margin are various factions within the party of consensus.

• Outside the margin are several opposition groups and parties,

dissident groups from the ruling party, and other interest groups
and important individuals.
• In India, the Congress, which is (used to be then) the party of
consensus, functions through an elaborate network of factions
 which provides the chief competitive mechanism of the Indian
system.
• In 1947, the Congress, which functioned as a broad-based nationalist
movement before independence, transformed itself into the
dominant political party of the nation.
• Although a number of opposition parties came into existence, it was
recognized that the Congress was the chief party, representing a
historical consensus and enjoying a continuing basis of support and
trust.
• Under the circumstances, political competition was internalized and
carried on within the Congress.
• There developed an elaborate system of factions at every level of
political and governmental activity, and a system of coordination
between the various levels through vertical "faction chains”.
• Structurally, such a party system displays two features:

o There is plurality within the dominant party which makes it

more representative, provides flexibility, and sustains internal
competition.

o At the same time, it is prepared to absorb groups and

movements from outside the party and thus prevent other
parties from gaining in strength.
• It is a system that concentrates strength within the dominant party
and then builds internal checks to limit the use of this strength.
• In this way the party representing a historical consensus also
continued to represent the present consensus. This ensured the
legitimacy of the system and of the institutional framework under
which it operates.
• The role of the opposition in this system is to constantly pressurize,
criticize, censure and influence it by influencing opinion and interests
inside the margin and, above all, exert a latent threat that if the
ruling group strays away too far from the balance of effective
public opinion, and if the factional system within it is not
mobilized to restore the balance, it will be displaced from power by
the opposition groups.
• By posing a constant threat, it ensures the mobility and life of the
internal power structure of the Congress. On the other hand, its own
strength is continuously conditioned by the strength of the Congress,
gaining where the latter loses, and sometimes gaining substantially
when the latter has lost grip over the situation or its internal
thermostat has failed.
• Electorate-wise, the Opposition can only hope to function
effectively at the local and regional levels.
• Legislature-wise, however, it also functions at the national level
and performs a very useful role in the maintenance of the system.
• He also mentioned five important points about Congress:

o The Congress, when it came to power, assigned a positive and

overwhelming role to government and politics in the
development of society.

o It made the power of the central authority the chief condition

of national survival. This power was not only consolidated but
greatly augmented.

o It made legitimacy the principal issue of politics and gave to

the government and the ruling party an importance of great
symbolic value. "Only the Congress could be trusted." This is
why only the Congress was the party of consensus.
 o The Congress in power made for a concentration of resources,
a monopoly of patronage and a control of economic power
which crystallized the structure of its power and made
competition with it a difficult proposition.

o By adopting a competitive model of development, it made

mobilization and public cooperation a function of political
participation rather than of bureaucratic control and police
surveillance.
• He adds that a significant trend in political development in India is
the growth of built-in constraints in the political system which has
led to a containment of conflicts at points where excessive conflict is
likely to disrupt the intricate balance on which the Congress system is
based.
• Hence, there developed over the years a conciliation machinery
within the Congress, at various levels and for different tasks,
which is almost constantly in operation, mediating in factional
disputes, influencing political decisions in the States and districts,
and not infrequently backing up one group against another and
utilizing the electoral and patronage systems in con- firming the
former in a position of power.
• He writes that the Congress has also shown great sensitivity on the
question of respect for minorities, including political minorities,
accommodating them whenever possible, and in general, pursuing a
broad-based consensus on national politics.
• He also believed that the delicate balance on which the legitimacy
and power of the Congress system rests may be rudely disturbed,
and a more authoritarian system might emerge.
• Political systems do change in their nature over time, and there is
no particular sanctity in one particular system.
Historian Ramachandra Guha writes in one of his articles about Rajni
Kothari as follows. It can also be seen as a criticism of Kothari’s model:

➢ The bulk of the book by Kothari (‘Politics in India’) was devoted to

the then dominant Congress party. Kothari argued that before and
after Independence, the Congress was successful in presenting itself
as the “authoritative spokesman of the nation as well as its
affirmed agent of criticism and change”.

➢ Towards the end of his book, Kothari offered one judgement and
one prediction.

! This was the judgement: “Because the Congress managed to

be in power continuously and there was no united or
effective threat to its authority, the country’s political process
gained incomparable advantages of continuity and unity.”

! And this was the prediction: “The Congress still needs to be an

organized political party in the country, with a nationwide
following and considerable depth in the localities.
This has two consequences central to the system’s functioning:

▪ It can continue to enjoy plurality at the centre and thus a

dominant voice in coalition-making;

▪ It can continue to control widespread local presence and

patronage even where it is no longer in power at the
state level.”
 REGIONALISM

Regionalism

Regionalism means to situate the approach and sentiments towards the

particular region.

It is argued that regionalism can be a form of resistance against the

imposition of a particular cultural ideology that is linked to the integration
of a nation.

Regionalism is found to have connections with the cultural patterns that

exist as a part of the dominant culture.

Sometimes, it does become a threat to the nation state by regional groups

who struggle for their particular sectional interests and at others it acts like a
force that brings people together, their grievances for the broader nation to
address, thus, reinforcing unity in diversity.

Regionalism is an ideology and political movement that seeks to advance

the causes of regions.

As a process it plays role within the nation as well as outside the nation i.e.
at international level. Both types of regionalism have different meaning and
have positive as well as negative impact on society, polity, diplomacy,
economy, security, culture, development, negotiations, etc.
Regionalism in India

India emerged as an independent nation state and later regionalism became

part of the different states in India. It is linked to the politics of
ethnocentricism.

For instance, natives of a particular region foreground their ontological and

epistemological priorities over a particular region. Natives presume that
they possess the authenticity over the issues and construction of subject
related to that region.
They imagine a sort of body politics that includes themselves and excludes
the ‘other’ as outsiders. It is a process of “othering” for outsiders.

At the same time, it is the return to ‘self’ for the natives. We can analyze the
tangible and intangible forms of regionalism through the behavioural and
social aspects of the diverse sections of people from the different parts of
India.

The Indian state was confronted with demands for the reorganisation of the
states (provinces or federating units) immediately after independence.

Upon the recommendation of the States Reorganisation Committee (SRC)

of 1953, headed by Fazal Ali, the provinces were recognised on the basis of
language.

By the 1960s, the provinces seemed to have settled down within the redrawn
boundaries.

- The larger province of Bombay was divided into Marathi-speaking

Maharashtra and Gujarati speaking Gujarat.

- Punjab was trifurcated into a Punjabi speaking Punjab, Hindi-speaking

Haryana, and Pahari speaking Himachal Pradesh.

- The Kannad-speaking areas of Bombay were transferred to the state of

Mysore/ Karnataka.

- Telugu-speaking areas of the Madras province were transferred to Andhra

Pradesh.

- The linguistic reorganisation looked complete and the first phase of

reorganisation of the states within the Indian union was over.
- Then came the demands for autonomy in the north-eastern region.

- The aspirations of the tribal groups were soon recognised by the Indian
state.

- The states of Manipur, Tripura, and Meghalaya were formed in the late
1970s.

- The North Eastern Frontier Agency (NEFA) was granted statehood under
the name of Arunachal Pradesh in 1987.

- The restive Nagas and the Mizos, however, were granted statehood only
after violent encounters with the Indian state.
The Naga insurgency continues until the present day, even after the
formation of the state of Nagaland in 1956.
The Mizo insurgency subsided after the 1973 agreement which declared the
Mizo district of Assam as a Union Territory.
Mizoram was later granted full state status after the 1986 agreement with
the rebel leader Laldenga.

However; this did not completely exhaust the aspirations for autonomous
administration or statehood by many groups.
The cultural differences within the overarching linguistic unity, in many
cases, led to demands for statehood within the primarily language-based
federating units of the Indian union.

Today, even the states often get entangled in violent clashes as was seen in
deadly clashes of forces of Assam and Mizoram in 2021.
Factors related with emergence of Regionalism
• The existence of relative deprivation is one of the most important
aspects in constructing the argument for regionalism.

For instance, if the people from any particular region feel that they are
more deprived than others in terms of distribution of resources,
infrastructures and so on, then it may create regional affiliation.

For example, Gorkha Nationalist Liberation Forum (GNLF) started its

movement in the Darjeeling. In the view of GNLF, Darjeeling was the
most underdeveloped region in comparison to the southern part of
West Bengal.

Growing regional inequalities in terms of income and consumption in

the post-reforms period have accentuated the perception of neglect and
discrimination.

Coastal regions/developed regions have invariably benefited more

from the flow of private investment as compared to the regions at
peripheral locations, those with disturbed law and order situations, and
those with poor economic and social infrastructure.

• The second significant factor for the emergence of regionalism is the

issue of language and culture. Every individual’s identity is based on
the categories of language and culture which, once politicized, play an
important role in the formation of region.

According to Edward Sapir, language plays a vital role in the creation

and determination of a region. Thus, the idea of region has to be
explored in the context of language debates.

• Unequal access to political power.

The local elites complain of “reverse” discrimination as often the
elites from the other politically dominant regions manage to corner
financial grants/deals/lucrative portfolios.
Besides the above factors, there are also many other factors responsible
for the growth of regionalism like:

i) Regionalism made its appearance as a reaction against the efforts of the

national government to impose a particular ideology, language, or
cultural pattern on all people or groups.
Thus the States of south have resisted imposition of Hindi as official
language because they feared this would lead to dominance of the
North.
Similarly, in Assam anti-foreigner movement was launched by the
Assamese to preserve their own culture;

ii) Continuous neglect of an area or region by the ruling parties and

concentration of administrative and political power has given rise to
demand for decentralization of authority and bifurcate of
unilingual states.
On occasions “sons of soil theory” has been put forth to promote
the interests of neglected groups or areas of the state;

iii) The desire of the various units of the Indian federal system to maintain
their sub-cultural regions and greater degree of self-government has
promoted regionalism and given rise to demand for greater
autonomy;

iv) The desire of regional elites to capture power has also led to rise of
regionalism. It is well known that political parties like DMK,
AIADMK, Akali Dal, Telugu Desam, Asom Gana Parishad etc. have
encouraged regionalism to capture power;

v) The interactions between the forces of modernization and mass

participation have also largely contributed to the growth of
regionalism in India.
As the country is still away from realising the goal of a nation state,
the various groups have failed to identify their group interests with
national interests; hence the feeling of regionalism has persisted;

vi) The growing awareness among the people of backward areas that they
are being discriminated against has also promoted feeling of
regionalism.
The local political leaders have often fully utilised this factor and
 tried to feed the people the people the idea that the central
government was deliberately trying to maintain regional imbalances
by neglecting social and economic development of certain areas.

A Short Note on Why son of the soil?

1. There remains a competition for job between migrant and local educated
middle class youth.

2. This theory works mostly in cities, because here outsiders also, get
opportunity for education, etc.

3. In such theories, major involvement of people is due to rising aspiration.

4. Economy’s failure to create enough employment opportunity.

Important Outcome of various Regionalist Movements

- Regional identity, culture, and geographical differences now appear to be

better recognised as a valid basis for administrative division and political
representation.

- Separate statehood movements are no longer being stigmatised as

parochial, chauvinist and even antinational as was done in the past.

- The shift is visible in the way the new states are now being proposed on
the grounds of good governance had development rather than on the
language principle that had, ostensibly, guided state formation during the
first phase of the reorganisation of states.

- The dialect communities of late have been asking for their own “territorial
homeland” while underlining the cultural and literary distinctiveness
and richness of the dialectic, i.e., Bundelkhand, Ruhelkhand, and
Mithilanchal.
What could be the criteria, then, for recognising a region?

SR Maheshwari writes quoting the criteria used by the MP Rasheeduddin

Khan (who has examined this problem quite deeply):

To promote discussion and further classification it is suggested that the

criteria for determining a socio-cultural sub-region in India can be formulated
as follows:

“Maximum homogeneity within and maximum identity without”

Where homogeneities are to be established on ten counts:

1) language dialect; 2) social composition (communities/jatis); 3) ethnic

regions; 4) demo-geographic features; 5) area (geographic contiguity);
6)cultural pattern; 7) economy and economic life; 8) historical antecedents;
9) political background; 10) psychological make –up and felt consciousness
of group identity.

A Kumar writing in Exploring the Demand for New States says that the
underlying principle in various accommodations of identity in India has
remained internal self-determination.

Internal self-determination has remained the predominant form in which

regionalism, and even sub-regionalism, has sought to express itself.

The regional and sub-regional accommodation of identity in India has

served to weaken the bases of political secessionism and separatism while
not defeating the principle of (internal) self-determination (of nations).
To Conclude:

Regionalism is a dynamic, pragmatic concept.

It seldom sustains itself on one single factor: a coalition of factors and

circumstances, including politicisation of the region and sense of economic
retardation is the basis of regional revival and assertions.

But the specific factors fostering regionalism are apt to vary from place to
place, and even in the context of the same place, the precise mix of them and
their individual potency do not remain unaltered over a period of time.

The peculiar historical processes have a bearing on regionalism.

Ashok Behuria says that the Indian federation has temperamentally

behaved as a “union” and not a “federation”. However, the leadership in the
country has to take care to adopt federal principles to judge such cases of
autonomy and gradually develop powers (especially financial powers) to the
units if it is to contain various ethnocultural assertions.

Among all these explanations there is a common thread of argument that says
that the shrinking capacity of the state, underdevelopment, and the
politicisation of plural peripheral identities, together with the search for
power by neo-elites at the margins, have snapped the interethnic and
intercultural bonds that have so far drawn them together.

This has created new identities and led to an overwhelming craze for
autonomy or self-legislation.

It is interesting to note that the concessions of statehood in the recent cases

seem to be conditioned by sheer electoral calculations and not by
considerations of economic viability. And these concessions in no way
altered the basic constitutionally guaranteed relationship between the
federation and the units, which is lopsided in favour of the federation.

Creation of “dependent” states will in no way improve the conditions, and

the passion for a greater degree of autonomy will haunt the Indian states
until a genuinely developed refederalized system of governance grows out
of the present system of Unitarian federal democracy in India.
Important Example:

- Formation of Jharkhand

The demand for the separate state of Jharkhand, shows the dynamics of the
politics of regionalism in India. It was demanded by the Jharkhand Mukti
Morcha. The struggle for the separate state of Jharkhand took almost fifteen
years. All the political parties have played an active role in it.

The rationale for creating this state is also based on the uniqueness of its
tribal cultural heritage.

However, the distribution of resources and the politics of development

remain significant in the socio-economic structures in Jharkhand due to the
continuing construction as relatively deprived and backward.

Hence, we can understand that whenever any state formulation happens

with the people’s struggle, it has certain aspirations and demands, which
may or may not be incorporated in or accommodated by, the formation of
the state.

It is true that regionalism and sub-regionalism are unavoidable in a vast

and plural country like India. It is not always correct to consider every
attempt to support or defend regional or sub-regional interests as divisive,
fissiparous and unpatriotic.

The problem begins when these interests are politicized and regional
movements are promoted for ulterior political motives. Such unhealthy
regional or sub-regional patriotism could be cancerous and disruptive. The
continuing regional imbalances have given rise to militant movements in
certain parts of our country.

Separatist demands in Jammu and Kashmir or by ULFA (United Liberation

Front of Assam) in Assam or by different groups in the North-Eastern region
are matters of grave concern for Indian polity.
 CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL SYSTEM

The BJP’s victory in 2014 ushered in a debate among political scientists and
political analysts over whether the country’s electoral politics was
experiencing a paradigm shift.

Indian politics was synonymous with coalition politics between 1989 and
2014, following decades of Congress Party dominance at the national
level; but for that quarter century, no single party was strong enough to
earn a parliamentary majority on its own, relying instead on dozens of pre-
and post-election allies to form a governing coalition.

The debate was therefore about whether India had left the era of
multipolarity, fragmentation, and coalitions behind in favor of a new,
dominant-party system in which the BJP assumed the role of central pole
that the Congress had once played.

There were scholars who were less hesitant in asserting that India was
witnessing the birth of a new party system. In the Journal of Democracy,
E. Sridharan wrote: “The results were dramatic, possibly even epochal. The
electoral patterns of the last quarter-century have undergone a sea change,
and the world’s largest democracy now has what appears to be a new
party system headed by a newly dominant party.”
2014
• The BJP’s victory in 2014 relied on near-total sweeps of a relatively
small number of states in the Indian union; in fact, 75 percent of the
BJP’s parliamentary tally in 2014 came from just eight states in the
north, west, and central regions of the country.
• Second, although the BJP clinched a majority in the Lok Sabha, it was
nowhere close to a majority in Rajya Sabha.
• Finally, the BJP’s reach was limited at the level of India’s states. Prior
to the 2014 election, the BJP ruled just five (of twenty-nine) states.

2019
• India ushered in a new, fourth party system—one that is premised on
a unique set of political principles and that shows a clear break with
what came before.
• In the 2019 general election, the BJP clinched a second consecutive
majority in the Lok Sabha, a feat last accomplished by the Congress
Party in 1980 and 1984.
• By June 2019, the party controlled twelve states while its allies
controlled another six. And made significant gains in Rajya Sabha.
THIRD PARTY SYSTEM
• In the third party system, no national party served as the central
gravitational force organizing politics.
• Electoral politics was marked by increasing party fragmentation,
intensifying political competition, and a federalization of national
politics.
• Furthermore, national voter turnout appeared to be relatively
stagnant, painting a stark contrast with rising turnout in state
elections—a signal that states had become the primary venues of
political contestation as opposed to national-level politics.
• Finally, the third party system was characterized by a changing
composition of political elites in which lower castes—Dalits
(Scheduled Castes, or SCs) as well as Other Backward Classes
(OBCs)—gained political representation, largely at the expense of
upper and intermediate castes.

Today, many of these principles stand altered, and 2014 represents a key
structural break.

Some less quantifiable traits suggest Indian electoral politics is operating

according to a new set of rules. These factors include the BJP’s ideological
hegemony, its organization and fundraising prowess, and its charismatic
leadership.
INDIA’S ELECTORAL SYSTEMS

There is broad consensus that India’s electoral history—from the

inaugural post-independence general election in 1952 until the sixteenth
Lok Sabha elections in 2014—can be roughly divided into three electoral
orders.

Yogendra Yadav has argued that a new electoral system commences

whenever an observer can “detect a destabilization of [an old system] and
its replacement by a new pattern of electoral outcomes as well as its
determinants.”

➢ 1952 TO 1967: CONGRESS DOMINANCE

o Between 1952 and 1967, the Congress Party dominated Indian

politics, both at the center and across her states.

o As the party primarily responsible for winning India her

independence and home to many of the most respected
nationalist leaders, the Congress benefited from widespread
popular appeal as the umbrella organization under which India
would establish its post-independence identity.

o The inadequacies of the other players on the political scene

fueled that dominance. Opposition forces were badly
fragmented, which limited their ability to mount a serious
campaign to unseat the Congress.

➢ 1967 TO 1989: GROWING OPPOSITION AT THE STATE LEVEL

o With the exception of the election of 1977—when the Congress

suffered due to autocratic excesses during Emergency Rule
between 1975 and 1977—the party remained the default choice
for governance at the center.
 o But new expressions of caste and regional identities chipped
away at the party’s monopoly of subnational politics.

o The year 1967 proved to be a critical inflection point, ushering

in the dawn of India’s second party system.

o Although the Congress’s grip on power in New Delhi

remained firm, its hold on India’s state capitals began to fade.

➢ 1989 TO 2014: DAWN OF COALITION POLITICS

o Congress dominance that remained after 1967, came to an end

in 1989, which denoted the start of coalition governance in
New Delhi and the third party system.

o Three powerful forces—often termed “Mandal, masjid, and

market”—disrupted Indian politics, prompting a realignment
in politics:

1. Mandal Commission, a government task force that

recommended that OBCs be given access to quotas
governing higher education seats and civil service posts.

It was on the backs of the agitation around Mandal that

India witnessed what Yadav dubbed a “second
democratic upsurge,” or the catapulting of traditionally
disadvantaged groups into the corridors of political
power. During this period, many caste-based parties
representing Dalit and OBC interests firmly entrenched
their position among the representative class.

2. The second force was the demolition of the Babri Masjid

in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, by pro-Hindu forces
associated with the BJP. This ethno-nationalist
mobilization helped fuel BJP’s sudden rise from a party
 that won just two seats in the 1984 general election to the
only national alternative to the Congress.

3. The third and final factor was the market, due to India’s
decision to liberalize its economy in 1991, embrace the
forces of globalization, and welcome global economic
integration.
BEYOND INDIA’S THIRD PARTY SYSTEM

In order to evaluate whether India has truly entered a new era of politics
with the BJP’s recent general election victories in 2014 and 2019, it is
necessary to clarify the precise attributes of the third party system against
which any future change can be measured.

➢ PRINCIPLES OF THE THIRD PARTY SYSTEM

There are six defining attributes of the third party system:

o First, the absence of a central pole in national politics between

1989 and 2009 is the central feature of the third party system.

o Second, the third party system was an era of political

fragmentation. The number of parties contesting elections
surged after 1989 as the Congress order broke down.

o Third, electoral contests became markedly more competitive.

Victory margins came down and the share of candidates
winning an outright majority of votes in their constituencies
dropped.

o Fourth, the entire political system became highly federalized.

National-level outcomes were directly influenced by the state-
level verdicts that preceded them, but the intensity of the effect
depended on the proximity of the two polls. Honeymoon and
anti-incumbency effects at the state level directly impacted
national polls.

o Fifth, voter turnout surged at the state level while national

political mobilization cooled. As states became the primary
venues for political contestation, voter turnout patterns shifted
in kind. In the third party system, the gap between voter
 turnout at the state and national levels saw unprecedented
divergence.

o Finally, there was a clear change in the social composition of

the representative class. For instance, in northern Hindi belt
states, the combined share of OBC and SC legislators
superseded that of upper caste and intermediate castes for the
very first time.
FROM MULTIPOLARITY TO UNIPOLARITY

In terms of aggregate electoral outcomes, the 2014 and 2019 elections

stand apart.

o First, the BJP won India’s first single-party majority in the Lok
Sabha since 1984, the year the Congress Party under Rajiv
Gandhi won an overwhelming mandate in the wake of Indira
Gandhi’s assassination.

o Second, 2014 was the first time in post-independence history

that a single party other than the Congress had claimed a
majority of seats in parliament.

o Third, although the BJP won a majority of seats, it exceeded its

previous best performance by a significant margin.

Headed into the 2019 race, many election analysts doubted the BJP’s
ability to replicate its 2014 feat for at least four reasons:

o The BJP’s victory was fueled by virtually running the tables

in a select set of states. For the BJP to match its 2014
benchmark, analysts thought the party would have to once
more sweep this relatively limited swath of territory—
especially given its limited presence in the south and east of
India.

o Second, BJP relentlessly campaigned in 2013 and 2014 on a

pledge to usher in acche din (good times) for the Indian
economy by generating rapid economic growth, creating
millions of jobs, and revitalizing India’s moribund investment
cycle. Yet large parts of the economic narrative simply did
not materialize during Modi’s first term in office.
 o In the 2014 election, many opposition parties chose to fight
the BJP on their own, as opposed to forming constructive
alliances. As a result, in several pivotal states, divisions
within the opposition served to fragment the anti-BJP vote,
leading to the former’s electoral marginalization. In 2019, the
opposition adopted—at least rhetorically—a strategy of
cooperation. In several key states, such as Uttar Pradesh
(India’s biggest electoral prize with 80 parliamentary seats),
longtime rivals joined forces not due to any common
ideological commitment or adherence to a unified leadership,
but rather as an existential impulse to prevent their
marginalization.

An additional sign of the BJP’s pan-Indian dominance is the fact that, in

2019, it contested more seats than the Congress Party for the first time in
history. In 2019, the BJP fielded candidates in 436 parliamentary
constituencies, compared to 421 for the Congress.

In 2014, BJP, for the first time, surpassed the Congress in the numbers of
MLAs. As of June 2019, the BJP boasts 32 percent of MLAs compared to 21
percent for the Congress and 47 percent for all other parties.

Another metric of the BJP’s hegemonic status is the party’s significantly

improved standing in the Rajya Sabha. From a paltry 5 percent of Rajya
Sabha seats in 1984, its representation grew to 22 percent in 2008 before
falling back to 17 percent in 2014. Since then, its share has shot up and in
2017, for the first time, the BJP’s tally surpassed that of the Congress. As
of July 2019, the BJP’s share stood at 32 percent as compared to the
Congress Party’s 20 percent share.
REDUCTION IN POLITICAL FRAGMENTATION
− As the dominant-party era gave way to the onslaught of coalitions,
there was a surge in the number of political parties contesting
elections.
− In India’s inaugural general election in 1952, fifty-five parties
fielded at least one candidate. That figure grew exponentially in the
mid-to-late 1980s as 117 entered the fray in 1989.
− There were two factors behind this growth:

o First, regional and caste-based parties multiplied in proportion

to the degree of popular disenchantment with the Congress
Party.

o Second, as coalition governance became the default position in

New Delhi, political entrepreneurs had every incentive to strike
out on their own and form new political parties. With just a small
clutch of seats, a single party could be the pivotal party required
to form a parliamentary majority—making the party leader the
ultimate kingmaker.
− By 2009, candidates from 370 political parties contested
parliamentary elections.
− Political fragmentation in India today appears to be as strong as
ever. The number of parties represented in Parliament has
remained in the upper thirties for two decades: thirty-six parties
are currently represented in the Lok Sabha.
− In order to derive a more accurate measure of political
fragmentation, political scientists prefer to calculate the effective
number of parties, which essentially weighs parties by the number
of votes (or seats) they actually earned.
WEAKER, NOT STRONGER, POLITICAL COMPETITION
− One way of measuring the degree of competition is to look at
the average margin of victory—that is the difference in the vote
share of the winner and the immediate runner-up—across
parliamentary constituencies in a general election.
− In 1962 and 1967, the average margin of victory was between
13 and 15 percent.
− After 1977, margins steadily came down over a period of
several decades. By 2009, the average margin of victory sunk to
its lowest level in the post-independence era: 9.7 percent.
− The average margin in 2014 grew to 15.2 percent—the highest
level since 1989, the first year of the coalition era.
− In 2019, margins touched 17.3 percent.

− Another way is to examine the vote share of the winning

candidate.
− Between 1977 and 1989, the average vote share of the winning
candidate never once fell below 50 percent.
− After falling to a historical low of 44 percent in 2009, the
average winner’s vote began to creep back up—first to 47.1
percent in 2014 and once more cracking the 50 percent
threshold in 2019 for the first time since 1989.
WEAKENING FEDERALIZATION OF NATIONAL ELECTIONS
− In the third party system, general election verdicts often
resembled a collection of state-level verdicts. This interaction
had several components, as laid out by Yogendra Yadav and
Suhas Palshikar:

o National-level political competition in each state was a

reflection of the dynamics associated with that state’s
politics.

o National elections were regularly influenced by state-

level political calendars.

o The degree of political participation in Lok Sabha

elections largely mirrored participation in state-level
politics.

o Finally, the performance of state governments was an

important determinant of voter behavior in national
elections.
− As Yadav and Palshikar pointed out, this does not mean that
national political choices were “duplicative” of choices made
in the state political arena; however, it does mean they were
“derivative.”
With respect to the electoral calendar, a certain pattern had taken root in
the third party system, as documented by Nirmala Ravishankar:

o If a national election is held in the first year of a state

government’s tenure, the ruling party in the state has a greater
probability of performing well when that state votes.

o This honeymoon effect lingers through the state government’s

second year in office, after which incumbency becomes a
liability.

o In year three of a state government’s tenure and beyond, the

shine wears off.

o The party then begins to underperform in national elections

and this anti-incumbent “penalty” grows as the distance from
the state election grows.

Recent data points suggest that state and national verdicts have become
partially decoupled.

This leads to the second important break with the past.

In both the 2014 and 2019 elections, BJP managed to presidentialize a

parliamentary election by making the election principally a vote on his
leadership.

Here, there was not a single opposition leader who had the stature or
popularity to favorably compete head-to-head with Modi.
− A central component of what people were voting for is Modi’s
leadership—the belief that he is a decisive leader, is
incorruptible, and operates with the national interest at heart.
− On the campaign trail, Modi was explicit in rallying
supporters with the plea that a vote for the BJP is a vote for
Modi, irrespective of whose name actually appears as the local
candidate on the ballot.
 − Another aspect of weakening federal character of elections is
the change in the balance of power between national and
regional parties. Between 1996 and 2014, voters in India have
been evenly divided between the two big national parties—the
Congress and BJP—and other regional parties.
− As a general rule of thumb, 50 percent of the vote has
traditionally gone to the two national parties while the
remaining 50 percent has accrued to hundreds of regional
players. In 2009, the share of the regional party vote peaked at
52.6 percent. In 2014, that share dipped to 48.6 percent
− While the Congress earned roughly 20 percent of the vote in
each of the past two elections, the grip of regional parties has
declined sharply—and this has redounded to BJP’s benefit. In
2019, the regional party vote share plummeted to 43.2 percent.

Regional parties are a highly heterogeneous category.

Broadly, they can be divided into two groups:

o On the one hand, parties that are only electorally relevant in a

specific region but may have larger national ambitions.

o E.g. caste-based parties like the Bahujan Samaj

Party (BSP), Samajwadi Party (SP), and the Janata
Dal (United) (JD[U])— largely concentrated in the
Hindi belt.

o On the other hand are “regionalist parties” that may have a

geographically circumscribed catchment area but whose
political mobilization rests on appeals to their state’s regional
pride, culture, language, and customs.
HEIGHTENED VOTER MOBILIZATION IN NATIONAL ELECTIONS
− A fifth characteristic of the third party system was the relatively
subdued level of voter turnout in national elections, especially
compared to the level of voter interest activation in state elections.
Voter turnout in India’s first party system averaged 60.1 percent,
with high turnouts in the first two general elections.
− Turnout over this period (1967–1984) averaged around 59.6 percent.
In the third party system (1989–2009), turnout averaged around 59.1
percent.
− From this perspective, 2014 exhibits a clear break in voter turnout,
when India recorded its highest turnout, at 66.4 percent.

This degree of voter mobilization was undoubtedly a reflection of two

factors:

o Widespread frustration with the incumbent Congress-led United

Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime and

o The excitement around the candidacy of Narendra Modi.

In 2019, according to data provided by the Election Commission of India

(ECI), 67.2 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots. An average turnout
of 66.8 percent in the past two elections demonstrates a clear break with
the third party system and what came before.
− Narrowing gap between national turnout and state turnout.

− Before the start of the third system, national turnout regularly

exceeded state turnout.
− In the coalition era, state turnout skyrocketed while national
turnout remained steady. By the mid-2000s, state turnout was
exceeding national turnout by an average of 10 percentage points.
This gap shrunk, to less than 4 percent between 2013 and 2017.
A final aspect of voter turnout is the gender breakdown.

Since electoral statistics began accounting for gender in 1967, there has
been a clear gender gap in turnout whereby women’s participation has
lagged far behind men’s.
− From 1967 to 2004 : Women’s turnout 8-12 percent points lower
than men’s.
− As the third party system waned, the gap between 2004 and 2009
decreased by 50 percent.
− The decline grew more intense in 2014, when the gap shrank to 1.8
percent.
− In 2019, for the first time in Indian electoral history, male and
female turnout rates were virtually at parity (the gap was a
negligible 0.1 percent).
− This change is likely a combination of demand-side and supply-
side shifts:

o Growing female education and empowerment

o A more dense information environment

o ECI’s stepped-up efforts to reduce the gender turnout

gap

However, conditional on being registered, women are now turning out to

vote at rates equal to men.

This is having important impacts on the nature of political campaigning

in India as parties are increasingly tailoring their outreach and messaging
to cater to female voters.
CASTE AND SOCIAL COMPOSITION
− As Yadav points out, in the first electoral system, the most
salient social category for politics was jati (one of thousands of
discrete caste groups that reside within the umbrella categories
of upper caste, OBC, SC, and so on).

o In the first party system, jati was highly embedded

within a particular local context.

o Second party system- as Yadav notes, jati-level identities

retained their importance, but changes in the political
environment meant that political parties worked to build
state-wide alliances of individual jatis in order to
construct a minimum winning coalition.

o Third party system- jatis lost their salience as the debate

shifted to the umbrella-like varna groupings in the wake
of the Mandal Commission report and its aftermath.
During this period, categories of “OBC” and “Dalit” took
on newfound importance.

o The fourth party system- these larger umbrella groupings

consisting of multiple jatis appear to have lost their
import. Instead, politics has returned to the construction
of jati-level alliances, as in the second party system—
but with a twist. One of the BJP’s great successes in many
north Indian states, including Uttar Pradesh, has been to
undermine the larger caste categories in an effort to
create a wedge between dominant jatis and subordinate
groupings.

o But the fourth party system also heralds a shift on a

second dimension of social identity. The rise of Mandal
politics in the late 1980s and early 1990s, along with pro-
 Dalit parties like the BSP, had a clear effect on the
sociology of power.
− What is also striking is the dwindling numbers of Muslims
elected to the Lok Sabha from these states. In 2019, the BJP did
not give a single ticket to a Muslim candidate in the Hindi belt
(for comparison’s sake, the Congress nominated eleven
Muslims from the same set of states).
THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE BJP’S POWER

➢ BJP AS SYSTEM-DEFINING PARTY

− One of the defining characteristics of the second party system

in which the Congress featured as the dominant power was that
national election verdicts functioned as referenda on
Congress rule.
− As Yadav explains, “[a] typical verdict in this period took the
form of a nation-wide or sometimes state-wide wave for or
against the Congress.
The local specificities of the constituency simply did not
matter.”
− Major parties contesting the 2019 elections, with relatively few
exceptions, positioned themselves as either supportive of
Modi and the BJP or vehemently opposed to them.
− While the opposition did not succeed in either creating a
nationwide coalition to tackle the BJP, it did forge a series of
state-specific alliances that were explicitly constructed on an
anti-BJP platform.
− In the end, the opposition’s machinations utterly failed to
contain the BJP’s rise, but the political formations on display
were largely in reaction to the BJP’s own standing- The very
definition of a system-defining party.
− State elections held between 2014 and 2019- For the BJP, the
party more often than not refused to project a chief ministerial
candidate, instead preferring to campaign on the backs of
Modi’s personal popularity as prime minister.
IDEOLOGICAL HEGEMONY
− Suhas Palshikar characterized BJP under Modi as a classic
example of a hegemonic political party.
− He defined hegemony as having two components:

o Ideology

o Electoral Performance
− According to Palshikar, BJP’s twin emphases on Hindu
nationalism and what he calls a “new developmentalism” have
allowed the party to saturate the political space in India.
− This has been made possible, in part, by the fact that the
Congress Party’s legacy of secular nationalism appears to
have fallen out of favor and that the BJP has adopted many of
the Congress Party’s welfarist policies.
− The party has developed a new, nationalist narrative. To
reduce this narrative to one of Hindu nationalism would be
inaccurate; the party’s pro-Hindu views are but one element of
its overall nationalist discourse.
− Broadly, this narrative has three elements:

o In the 2014 and 2019 general election campaigns, the

party selectively deployed Hindutva (Hindu
nationalism) in parts of the country where the party felt it
would help consolidate their electoral base. Over the
past two decades, the BJP has made sincere efforts at
broadening its demographic base beyond a small sliver of
Hindu upper castes and trading communities to include
Dalits (Scheduled Castes), OBCs, and Adivasis
(Scheduled Tribes) by using memes such as Ram Mandir,
 cow protection, and illegal immigration to transcend
caste divisions among Hindus.

o In recent years it has made use of a more amorphous

nationalism centered on territorial sovereignty, loyalty
to the nation, and resentment towards traditional liberal
elites.

Devesh Kapur noted, “Its nationalism is unapologetic

about India’s Hindu roots, and it is prepared to be more
assertive in defense of what it regards as its national
interests – even if it means redefining the idea of the
‘nation.’”

Modi, towards the conclusion of the 2019 campaign,

boasted of his independence from the elite “Khan Market
gang” that had dominated the corridors of power for
decades.

o The final strain of nationalism has to do with a

muscularity abroad and a reclaiming of India’s rightful
place in the world.
For the first time in recent memory, voters on the
campaign trail routinely told reporters that this election
was more than a battle between partisan contenders, it
was a battle “desh ke liye”
Aside from nationalism, the BJP has also managed to dominate the
discourse on the economy and economic development.
− Three ideas have been central to the BJP’s posture:

o First, the Modi government is unabashedly pro-business

and the prime minister has contrasted this with the
Congress’ record—particularly in the final years of its
second stint in office between 2009 and 2014—of policy
paralysis and burdensome regulation. Although Modi
has not emerged as the pro-market reformer, he has been
much more consistent about hewing a pro-business line,
especially with regards to indigenous Indian business.

o Second, Modi has brandished his bona fides as the

ultimate anticorruption reformer. The hallmark of this
fight was his government’s decision in November 2016 to
invalidate 86 percent of India’s currency in an effort to
squeeze black money circulating in India.

o Third, he has also refashioned his own image as the

architect of India’s modern welfare state. If Modi’s first
pivot was to transition from Hindu strongman to vikas
purush (development hero) in the latter years of his
tenure as Gujarat chief minister, his second pivot has been
to shift from a leader who talked incessantly about the
middle class, jobs, investment, and growth to one whose
main message centers on welfare.

Modi’s pro-welfare emphasis has placed the Congress on the back foot
for a simple reason: many of the schemes he has invested in were
essentially schemes the Congress set up. What Modi did was rebrand
them, scale them up, and give them priority status in the Prime Minister’s
Office (PMO). At root, many of these welfare schemes emerged from
Congress Party blueprints.
ORGANIZATIONAL AND FINANCIAL PROWESS
− A political machine gave the BJP the ability to project Modi
as a leader with unimpeachable credentials, to deliver its
nuanced messages of nationalism to different target
audiences, and to parry the opposition’s jibes.
− Under the tutelage of BJP President Amit Shah, the party has
built a well-oiled party machine that is organized down to
the level of the panna pramukh—literally a party worker
who is in charge of an individual panna (page) of the voter
roll linked to a neighborhood polling station.
− Furthermore, the BJP owns a first-mover advantage insofar
as integrating technology with campaigning is concerned.
E.g.: Facebook to SMS to WhatsApp to build cohesion
among its workers, between voters, and between workers
and voters.
− BJP’s financial advantage- BJP’s advantage over Congress
when it comes to corporate funding stood at twenty to one in
2018.
− In 2018, the government also formally unveiled a new
mechanism of political giving, known as electoral bonds.
Based on information acquired through a Right to
Information Act request, 95 percent of the bonds purchased
in 2017–2018 accrued to the BJP’s accounts.
CHARISMATIC LEADERSHIP
− It could be argued that both the 2014 and 2019 elections were
Modi’s victories rather than the BJP’s.
− In the 2014 race, the BJP encountered a perfect storm of anti-
incumbency against the ruling Congress, economic malaise, a
pervasive sense of policy paralysis, and lackluster leadership
on the part of the Congress.
− At that time, Modi also enjoyed (apart from being a charismatic
opposition leader) a well-regarded reputation as a no-
nonsense, pro-business economic reformer—was able to take
the country by storm.
− Modi’s favorability has to be seen in the context of a general
dearth of popular, charismatic leaders among opposition
forces.
CONCLUSION

Since 2014, India has embarked on a new chapter in its political evolution.

Gone are the days of Congress dominance, but India’s grand old party has
clearly been replaced by a new, formative political force in the BJP.

With the 2019 general election, it is now clear that India is in the midst of a
new, dominant-party system.

The dawn of this fourth party system raises important questions that
deserve greater exploration by political scientists in the years to come.

• First, how do economic indicators shape voting behavior? For decades,

it was believed that good economics did not make for good politics in
India.

• A second issue that deserves greater scrutiny is the role of caste.

There are broadly two conceptions of Indian electoral politics:

- First- is that elections are mainly about arithmetic, or the ability of

political parties to amass support from a sufficient number of castes or
communities to get a minimum winning coalition.

- The second conception is that elections are about chemistry, rather than
arithmetic. In other words, leadership, messaging, coalition dynamics,
and so on trump purely identity-based calculations in which a party’s
popularity can be measured merely with reference to the vote banks that
have traditionally supported it.

- A third area relates to role of political campaigns. Both the 2014 and 2019
elections suggest that campaigns have a material impact on voter
behavior. For instance, it is indisputable that the tensions between India
and Pakistan helped bolster the BJP’s case for re-election even while it
is very much disputed how significant this factor was in terms of votes
and seats.