[IMC-Editorial] [India Thinkers Net]POLITICAL PARTIES AND PARTY SYSTEMS

[India Thinkers Net at Zinester.com]

SEMINAR
#531
November 2003

POLITICAL PARTIES AND PARTY SYSTEMS edited by
Ajay K. Mehra, D.D. Khanna and Gert W. Kueck.
Sage, New Delhi, 2003.
THE book under review draws our attention to two
notable developments in the nature of the party
system and the polity in India over the last two
decades. First, there has been a dramatic change
in the social composition of voters and active
participants in politics in the sense we are
witness to a democratic participatory upsurge
among the peripheral masses, whether seen in
terms of caste hierarchy, economic class, gender
distinction or the rural-urban divide. Second,
party politics has undergone a process of
federalization at the national, state and local
levels. Among the related developments one can
refer to changes in the support bases of
'historic parties', an increase in the number of
both 'splinter parties' as well as 'relevant
parties', and so on. All these and other
developments have led to a cataclysmic change in
the nature of political parties - their ideology,
strategy, leadership and support base thereby
indicating not only a 'power shift, but also
assertions of a federal society over a
centralized polity.'
Among the above developments the essays in the
edited volume primarily focus on the
federalization of Indian politics at three
levels, namely, 'the status and strategies,
interaction patterns and processes of India's
innumerable political parties; the texture and
pattern of political alliances from the national
perspective - particularly, how alliances with
regional parties are viewed and made by national
parties; conversely, the perspective of the
regional parties in making these alliances.'
What have been the features of a federalizing
party system in India? Mehra refers to them as
follows: organizational and ideological decline
of Congress, introduction of conflictual mode of
politics, resembling of the national parties in
several respects, dramatic change in the social
composition of voters and active participants in
politics, the failure of the 'third front' to
consolidate in the face of a resurgent Hindutva
ultra rightist forces. The last, namely the rise
and fall of the third front, comes up for
critical examination in the papers by Bidyut
Chakrabarty and Muchkund Dubey.
While referring to the decline of the third front
and the emergence of BJP in recent years, Balveer
Arora argues that newly emergent 'bi-nodal' party
system is becoming highly competitive mainly due
to the democratization as well as fragmentation
of voters and political parties. He bases his
arguments on the official data of the 1996, 1998,
1999 Lok Sabha elections. In another empirical
study related to the nine Hindi speaking states,
Partha Ghosh traces the emergence of a 'bi-nodal'
party system to the decay in the Congress
organization as well as leadership, and also to
the challenge posed by a resurgent Hindu
nationalist Jana Sangh. It was compelled as early
as in the sixties to 'trip from the razor-edge
balancing' it had done to maintain the support of
a rainbow social coalition thus paving the way
for the BJP, successor of the Jan Sangh.
In a national election survey data based study of
the three elections mentioned above, sponsored by
CSDS, Amit Prakash attributes the decline of
Congress and the emergence of BJP in the newly
emergent bi-nodal system to 'a greater voter
preference for regionally based socio-culturally
located parties with mobilization base in a
distinct economic grouping in the society.' The
assertion of regional socio-cultural or economic
interests is evidenced in the form of the
emergence of coalition politics. Reflecting on
the regionalization of the Indian party system,
Pradeep Kumar refers to the misleading nature of
the often emphasized dichotomy between the
national and regional parties as 'not only are
the former regional in their support bases, even
the latter are sometimes non-regional in their
ideological or programmatic make up.' Both Pran
Chopra and Suhas Palshikar consider such
regionalization/federalization of party politics
as a positive development as long as it does not
lead to a politics of divisiveness and a 'weak
centre' respectively.
Showing concern with the working of the
procedural form of democracy, Madhav Godbole
suggests the incorporation of 'a proper
constitutional and legislative framework' for
ever-increasing number of political parties in
the face of the rising distortions both in the
electoral and organizational framework of the
parties. In this context he refers to the role of
money, crime, electoral manipulation and muscle
power on a massive scale. As for the lack of
democracy in its substantive form, S.K. Chaube
argues that it is reflected in an increasing
incongruence between the imperatives of power
politics and civilized social ethos.
The edited volume, consisting of original
articles especially written for the volume, is
welcome as academic writing illustrating the
effects of social and electoral change upon the
nature of parties and party systems in a
post-Congress Indian polity is not easily
available. It goes without saying that political
parties, unlike in the West, remain central to
Indian political life. On a personal note, the
volume is dedicated to the late Pradeep Kumar, a
colleague at Panjab University who, to recall
Paul Baran, was an intellectual in a true sense
and not merely an intellect worker that most of
us in the university systems are.
Ashutosh Kumar


Courtesy: Harsh Kapoor/SACW
www.sacw.net


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