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ELECTIONS AND POLITICAL PARTIES IN INDIA : FEDERALIZATION OF THE POLITY

Article | June 1, 2012 - 6:59pm | By Mahendra Prasad Singh

A must read article which is truly insightful in more ways than one. - Site Administrator

INTRODUCTION

Democracy has two major dimensions: electoral and governmental. Both are equally important and must be synergistically and symbiotically constructed in harmony in a liberal-democratic political system. Arguably, however, the electoral dimension is of greater importance, or at least primarily constitutive of democracy, as even a bad self-government is preferable to a good colonial rule. Nevertheless, self-government in the sense of directly participative democracy has in the course of historical evolution of the state or political system been largely replaced by electoral democracy. The still operative institutions of direct democracy in France, Switzerland, some states in the 'Wild West' in the United States of America, and in the Canadian West and Quebec in the contemporary world are exceptional in the realm of comparative government and politics. They are largely attributable to the birth of presidential federalism in the USA and Switzerland in revolutionary wars and the continuing political tradition of popular sovereignty cohabiting with republican or representative federal governance, especially in Switzerland. In Canada`s evolutionary parliamentary federal democracy recourse to referendum in federal and some provincial domains may be due to a limited impact of the French and American connections.

Political parties have been an inevitable outgrowth in representative electoral democracies. Despite anti-party sentiments of George Washington, Lord Bolingbroke, Mahatma Gandhi and Jayaprakash Narayan, the historical experience, at least thus far, suggests that a system of representative democracy cannot do without them.1 Yet creeping corruption and authoritarianism in democratic party governments have occasionally caused civil society interventions or popular mass movements for greater participation in party-political processes and governance. The Progressive Movements in American and Canadian politics in the first two decades of the twentieth century and the JP Movement in the 1970s and the Anna Hazare Movement in 2011 in India in the wake of the heady Arab Spring of democratic ferment are the cases in point.

Electoral politics and party politics are expectedly closely interrelated. For the primary objective of political parties is to win elections in order to be able to form a government in accordance with the majority rule sanctioned by the parliamentary principle of government. However, a well-functioning party system cannot be entirely indifferent to the constitutional and functional imperatives of governance. Elections and party politics are, after all, a means to a higher end, namely, good governance and an all-round development of the political community. Ideally, the party system must seek to optimise and harmonize the imperatives of electoral success and those of good governance and development. Under a parliamentary federal constitution like India`s parties are additionally required to be functionally conducive to a balanced and purposive working of such a political system.

This paper is divided into three major parts that follow this Introduction. The first part presents and outline of the present configuration of the major political parties of the country and coalitions among them. The second part delineates the principal patterns of electoral politics and stages of the party system evolution in India. The third part address the issue of party system reforms to make it structurally and functionally supportive of India`s constitutional democratic regime wedded to parliamentary federal principles of government.

CONFIGURATION OF POLITICAL PARTIES

Going by the Election Commission Report on the 15th Lok Sabha election held in 2009, a total of 411 political parties entered the electoral fray. Seven of these parties were recognized or classified as 'National' parties, 41 as 'state' or regional parties, and the rest (N = 363) were merely registered parties.2 If we configure the major parties on a programmatic or ideological spectrum ranging from the right through the centre to the left, we get the picture in Table 1.

Table 1

Parties of Rightist, Centrist and Leftist Orientations

Right

Centre

Left

BJP*

INC*

CPI (M)*

SAD

BSP*

CPI*

NCP*

JKNC

RPI

PDP

INLD

JD (U)

RJD*

JMC

BJD

INTC

AGP

TDP

JD (S)

AIADMK

DMK

* Recognized as “national” parties in terms of Election Commission criteria on the basis of their performance in the 2004 Lok Sabha Election. All the other parties listed here are “state” or regional parties.

The Election Commission of India's classification alluded to above and our Table 1 suggest two important features of parties in India. First, national parties are far fewer than state parties or marginal paties (as we will see later). There were only 7 national parties that entered the electoral process in the 15th general election for the Lok Sabha in 2009 : Indian National Congress (INC), Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M), Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Communist Party of India (CPI), and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). One of these, RJD, lost the status of a national party subsequent to the 2009 elections as its performance dipped below the criteria for such a party set by the Election Commission. No new party rose to these standards in 2009. Second, the bulk of the parties in India are organizations or groupings of middle-of-the-road liberal and centrist political orientation. Only three parties in Table 1 appear as subscribing to the right wing: the Hindu Right BJP, the Sikh Right Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), and the Hindu Right and Maharashtrian / Mumbai nativist Shiv Sena (SS). Of these, only BJP has a wider national presence. The SAD is mainly limited to Punjab and SS started as a nativist Mumbai party now with a wider following but only in Maharashtra state. And, only three parties appear as the parties of the left wing: CPI-M, CPI, Forward Bloc (FB), and Revolutionary Socialist Party of India (RPI). The first two of these are mainly concentrated in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura and the last two in West Bengal only.

An examination of 41 regional or state parties (in terms of Election Commission's classification) would suggest that only 12 must be counted by us from the added joint criteria of their role in state as well as national politics for purposes of government and opposition. These are All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) (both from Tamil Nadu), All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) (West Bengal), Biju Janata Dal (BJD) (Orissa), Janata Dal (Secular) (JD-S) (Karnataka) Janata Dal (United) (JD-U) (Bihar), Jammu & Kashmir National Conference (JKNC), Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) (Punjab), Shiv Sena (SS) (Maharashtra), Samajwadi Party (SP) (Uttar Pradesh), Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) (both from Andhra Pradesh). There is another group of regional or state parties that may not be discounted despite their marginal presence in the national Parliament (one or two Members in the Lok Sabha) as they are crucial for government formation and opposition by virtue of their sizeable representation in the respective Vidhan Sabha of the concerned state where they operate. These are the following : Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) (Jharkhand), Nagaland People's Front (NPF) (Nagaland), and Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF) (Sikkim). The registered unicognized parties may be practically discounted from our discussion, though the category of non-party Members of Parliament (MPs) called "Independents" occasionally play a balancing role in government formation, maintenance, or destabilization.

The centrist political orientation of the bulk of political parties in India may be explained as a result of the powerful pull towards the middle-of-the road liberal progressivism and democratic populism engendered by the anti-colonial nationalist movement in the first half of the twentieth century and persistent centrism of electoral politics following the Independence in 1947, only occasionally jolted a bit by the right-wing or left-wing success patterns of electoral politics in the national or state politics in the country. For example, the 1960s witnessed a mild wave of right-wing secular success pattern led by the Swatantra Party patronized by the free-enterprize ideologue Chakravarty Rajagopalachari and some princely houses of the former Indian states integrated with the Indian federal Union. The 1970s witnessed a strong wave of populist democratic upsurge led by the national and personal charisma of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi aided by the former communist Congressmen and communist parties. This leftist tilt was broken by the democratic populist, Gandhian socialist, anti-authoritarian and anti-corruption extra-parliamentary mass movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan and by the electoral success of the Janata Party that came to power in the trail of this movement in New Delhi and major North Indian states in the late 1970s. Following the fall of the Janata Party governments under their own internal contradictions in 1979 in New Delhi and in the early 1980s in the north Indian states, Indira Gandhi-led INC was voted back to power, and Rajiv Gandhi was catapulted to power following her assassination in 1984. But this phase of Congress revival was marked by a mild tilt towards neoliberal policy preferences as well as compromise with ethnic, religions and regionalist political forces. The rise of similar populist political tendencies since the 1980s at the state level, and its greater moment since the 1990s at the national level, have engendered the regional versions of democratic populism variously in alliance with right-wing or left-wing populism or religious revivalism led by the Hindu Right or Sikh Right. Regional versions of mixed populism more or less mirrored the middle-of-the-road political orientations of the national level but with regionalist pulls and pressures. This composite persistent centrism of Indian electoral and party politics is also reinforced by the departures from the party political processes of extreme left-wing radicalism of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist underground organizations, religious fundamentalist and separatist nationalist insurgencies and terrorist strikes.

To take a more probing view of the party system, we present a discussion of the performance of important political parties in the 2009 Lok Sabha election. The two main national parties – INC and BJP heading the rival coalition fronts called United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and National Democratic Alliance (NDA) respectively – won 206 and 116 Lok Sabha seats each individually (total Number of seats 545). The percentage of votes over the total votes polled was 28.55 percent for INC and 18.80 percent for BJP. The UPA improved its position considerably from 215 seats in 2004 to 261 in 2009. The NDA suffered reverses, its strength going down from 186 seats in 2004 to 159 in 2009. The Left parties suffered a steep slide from 59 seats to 24. Their attempt to forge a third front between the foregoing major coalitional blocs comprising the left and some regional parties did not cut much ice. The left and some national and regional parties like BSP, BJD, AIADMK, TDP, JD(S), etc., came a cropper, winning only 79 seats, that too practically separately. Indeed, a fourth front minus the left also appeared on the scene. It consisted of nine non-descript parties mainly led by SP and RJD and bagged only 27 seats. The UPA's vote share of 37.22 percent and NDA's 24.63 percent notionally accounted for, 61.85 percent of seats.

From a snap-shot view of the major parties and two inter-party coalitions ranged against each other in 2009, we may now take a retrospective look at the major federal coalitional fronts in the post-Congress dominance phase of multiparty systems since the 1989 Lok Sabha elections to date. This is, however, preceded by a brief composite account of inter-party coalition governments in Indian states (where this brand of politics first started) and in New Delhi in the pre-1989 period.

Before the onset of the “federal phase” in Indian politics in 1989, more or less coinciding with “globalizing phase” in political economy since 1991 (both mutually reinforcing in effect), one can mark out at least two major trends of coalition governments in Indian states. These two trends appeared on the scene in the late 1960s3 and the late 1970s. The major ideologues of these two strategies of 'non-Congressism' where Ram Manohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan respectively. Both were among the leading founders of the Congress Socialist Party in the mid-1930s. Following India's independence, Congress Socialist Party shed its sub-party status in the Indian National Congress and formed a separate Socialist Party, which subsequently passed through regroupings as Praja Socialist Party and Samyukta Socialist Party through the 1950s and 1960s, and finally disappeared from the political scene by the early 1970s through absorption into the Indian National Congress or electoral dissipation. Lohia was the leading founder of the Samyukta Socialist Party in 1966. Jayaprakash Narayan left Praja Socialist Party in 1953 to join the non-party, Gandhian Sarvodaya Movement then led by the Bhoodan (renunciatory land gift to the landless) Movement led by a Gandhian social worker, Acharya Vinoba Bhave. The strategy of non-Cogressism was premised on the calculation that the then seemingly invincible Congress Party was ruling on the plurality, rather than majority, of votes; and it could thus be defeated by an aggregation of the non-Congress votes. Lohia was instrumental in the formation of the pre-election non-Congress coalitions in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa and elsewhere around the nucleus of Congress splinters that had broken away from the parent party on an unprecedented scale on the eve of the fourth general election in 1967. Other paties that joined in these Samyukta Vidhayak Dal coalitions ranged from the extreme right through centre to the left. This was the source of their strength as well as weakness. Nearly half a dozen of these coalition governments in various north Indian states soon collapsed more due to their internal contradictions than through their destabilization via central intervention from the Congress Party government in New Delhi under article 356 of the constitution providing for emergency in a state due to the 'failure of the constitutional machinery' there. This period saw the onset of the large-scale and frequent multiple defections of legislators from one party to another, motivated largely by political opportunism and personal political gains rather than by policy and programmatic issues. It scuttled the process of growth of disciplined parties, which is vital for a well-functioning party government in a parliamentary system immediately responsible to the legislature and ultimately accountable to the electorate. The anti-defection legislation belatedly enacted in 1985 and enshrined in the tenth schedule of the constitution has not been able to curb this menace. The restoration of the Congress Party led by Indira Gandhi in 1971 following the great split in this party in 1969 overtook this phase of extremely unstable non-Congress coalition governments in states.

The second round of electoral and governmental coalition formation among the non-Congress and non-communist parties was prompted by the Gujarat and Bihar Movements stirred up initially by Morarji Desai in Gujarat that came to be finally led on a wider scale covering the major northern and western Indian states down to Bangalore by Jayaprakash Narayan.4 This extra-parliamentary mass movement against the Congress governments at national and state levels on the issues of authoritarianism and corruption in these governments was sought to be suppressed by the proclamation of national emergency under article 352 of the constitution by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. This anti-democratic move and authoritarian amendments to the constitution by the emergency regime ultimately backfired. In the post-emergency 1977 Lok Sabha election, the anti-Indira Congress led by the right-leaning old guard called Congress (Organization), Bharatiya Lok Dal, Bharatiya Jana Sangh, Socialist Party, and Congress for Democracy (another Congress splinter) merged on the election-eve to form the Janata Party that dislodged the Congress for the first time from power in New Delhi. Ranged against the INC led by Indira Gandhi, the Janata Party government that came to be formed by Morarji Desai of the Congress (Organization) was basically a de facto coalition of hurriedly merged Congress rebel splinters and peasant proprietors' Bharatiya Lok Dal and the Hindu Right Bharatiya Jana Sangh plus the Sikh Right Shiromani Akali Dal. Except for the Akali Dal all the others had formally merged into a single political formation called the Janata Party. However, the process of merger was never carried to its logical and substantive conclusion. Organizationally, it was at best a confederal party with a minimal overall central authority. This explains why the Janata Party - which subsequently expanded into Janata Dal in 1988 with the addition of a new Congress splinter, Jan Morcha led by V.P. Singh - so easily fragmented into half a dozen splinters in several states by the early 1990s. In the immediate term as well the Janata Party government remained plagued by persistent factionalism along the lines of its pre-merger constituents and their main leaders. It collapsed mid-way through its five-year mandate in July 1979.

At the federal level since the 1989 Lok Sabha elections, there have been four broad configurations of coalition governments, besides one Congress minority government led by Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao (1991-1996). These four brands of coalition governments have been the following : (1) the Janata Dal-led National Front headed by V.P. Singh (1989-1990), (2) two Janata Dal–led United Front governments headed respectively by H.D. Deve Gowda and I.K. Gujral consequitively (1996-1998)5, (3) BJP-led National Democratic Alliance headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1998-1999 and 1999-2004), and (4) The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance headed by Manmohan Singh (2004-2009 and 2009- todate, Spring 2012)5

The 1989 Lok Sabha elections proved to be a decisive turning point when the Congress government yielded power to a Janata Dal-led National Front government, thus initiating an era of coalition and /or minority governments in New Delhi. Until the 1996 Lok Sabha elections there were three pivot parties at the at the core of the system : the Janata Dal (JD), Indian National Congress (INC), and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). We call them pivot parties in the sense that they served as the three nuclei for formation of major inter-party coalitions for government and opposition. The JD got, however, so decimated through regional fragmentation and electoral reverses that the party (then called Janata Party) that appeared to be the historic alternative to the INC in 1977 remained only a pale shadow of its past and potential glory subsequently and finally practically disappeared under its previous name. Since 1977 Janata Party /Dal remained plagued by unending splintering and feuding, just like batwara (separation)-prone peasant family in the rural-urban milieu. At this writing (March 2012) the JD has splintered into Samajwadi Janata Party led by Chandrashekhar and now extinct), Samajwadi Party led by Mulayam Singh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana Vikas Party (founded by Banshilal and since merged with INC), Indian National Lok Dal led by Omprakash Chautala inHaryana, Rashtriya Janata Dal led by Lalu Prasad Yadav in Bihar, Biju Janata Dal led by Naveen Patnaik in Odisha, Janata Dal (Secular) led by H.D. Deve Gowda in Karnataka, and the rump Janata Dal (United) which, despite its name is nationally inconsequential but maintains a significant presence in Bihar under the leadership of Nitish Kumar who presently heads the JD(U)-BJP or NDA coalition government re-elected in 2010. The former Bharatiya Jana Sangh constituent of the JD split from it in 1980 and emerged as a major national party though it has consistently fallen short of majority like other national parties since 1989. The Janata Dal was a predominantly a party of peasant proprietors from the middle castes, called in official parlance as the Other Backward Classes (OBCs, the suffix 'other' to differentiate them from the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the Backward Classes). All these parties, excluding the BJP, are generally referred to as the Janata parivar (family) parties that are programmatically left-of-the-centre, peasant-oriented, and secular. With the fragmentation of the Janata Dal by the late 1990s, the earlier trinodal coalitional configurations turned into a bicoalitional pattern hinging on the remaining two major national parties, namely, the INC and the BJP. The former previously flaunted its commitment to an Indian version of socialism under Nehru and populism under Indira Gandhi, but it has since 1991 turned into an advocate of neoliberal economic reforms. Its advocacy of neoliberalism is, however countervailed by its continued adherence to public policies of welfare of the am admi (common man) under the compulsions of electoral winnability. For this reason it may still be interpreted as left of the centre in its programmatic orientation, by and large, and secular in terms of cultural and minority welfare issues. The BJP is, of course, the major party of Hindu Right and pro-neoliberal economic reforms.

The National Front included the Janata Dal, the two major communist parties, and some major regional parties like AGP, DMK, TDP and two minor left-wing parties from West Bengal, Forward Bloc and RSP (see Table 2). It was a pre-poll coalition with a common manifesto of the Front and separate manifestos of its individual parties as well. The leftwing parties did not join the coalition cabinet and only supported the government from the parliamentary floor. They also attended the meetings of the coordination committee of the Front, whose convener was N. T. Rama Rao, the TDP leader and the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh. Limited in their options, the BJP also renounced formal opposition to the National Front (NF) government and professed support to it from outside.

TABLE 2

PARTIES THAT FORMED THE NATIONAL FRONT GOVERNMENT AFTER THE 1989 LOOK SABHA ELECTION

NF Parties

No. of Candidates Contested

No. of Candidates Won (N/%)

Vote Share in Total Votes Polled (%)

AGP

CPI

12 (2.27)

2.57

CPI (M)

33 (6.24)

6.55

DMK

00 (00)

2.39

FBL

3 (0.57)

0.42

ICS (SCS)

1 (0.19)

0.33

244

143 (27.03)

17.79

RSP

4 (0.76)

0.62

TDP

2 (0.38)

3.29

Notes : 1. Elections were held for 529 seats, minus the seats in Assam where polls were postponed due to ethnic violence.

2. Left Front (CPI, CPI-M, RSP and FBL) extended outside support without joining the NF government.

3. BJP with 85 seats was not a part of UF, also offered to support the NF government.

Source : Statitistics about parties from Election Commission Report on the 9th General Election 1989, combined with the information about the formation of the NF from the media.

The National Front government was bedeviled by internal bickerings, especially between Prime Minister V.P. Singh and Deputy Prime Minister Devi Lal. Personality clashes between the PM and the Deputy PM also developed policy glosses over time : there were feuds over the impulsive implementation of reservations for OBCs by V.P. Singh without any consultation with the coordination committee or the cabinet, though the issue was a part of the National Front manifesto. However, the immediate cause of the fall of the National Front government was the withdrawal of the outside support of the BJP when the Hindu mobilizational Somnath-to-Ayodhya rath yatra (Chariot drive) of Lal Krishna Advani was arrested by the Janata Dal Chief Minister of Bihar, Lalu Prasad Yadav, in Samastipur in the autumn of 1990. Following this, Chandrashekhar, a major Janata Dal leader from eastern UP, deserted the party with 55 MPs to organize the breakaway Samajwadi Janata Party and formed a minority government with the outside support of the INC. This government too fell after a mere four months when the INC withdrew its support complaining against surveillance of a few Haryana policemen outside the New Delhi residence of the top Congress leader Rajiv Gandhi.

After the interregnum of the Congress minority government led by P.V. Narasimha Rao (1990-1996), the Janata Dal-led grouping of the 'third force' parties between the INC on the one hand and the BJP on the other was actively explored again in the hung Parliament without a clear majority for any party in the Lok Sabha. This time, however, it was a post-poll coalition formation. Being the third largest party after the BJP and Congress, the JD got its chance after the failure of the BJP minority government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee to muster majority and thereafter the decline of the presidential invitation to form the government by the INC. The structure of party competition in the Lok Sabha at this point in time is given in Table 3.

TABLE 3

PARTY POSITION IN LOK SABHA ELECTED IN 1996

Coalitions & Parties

Seats

BJP & Allies

BJP

160

Shiv Sena

Samata Party

Shiromani Akali Dal

HVP

Congress & Allies

INC

136

JMM (S)

IUML

KC (M)

SDF

Janata Dal & Allies

TDP (Naidu)

DMK

AGP

ASDC

CPI (M)

CPI

RSP

AIFB

Uncommitted

TMC*

BSP

Congress (Tiwari)*

MIM

MPVC

MGP

UGDP

KCP

Independents

Note:* At the time of government formation, TMC and Congress (T) joined the United Front Council of Ministers.

Source:M.P. Singh, "The National Front and United Front Coalition Governments : A Phase in Federalized Governance" in M.P. Singh and Anil Mishra, eds., Coalition Politics in India : Problems and Prospects, New Delhi : Manohar, under the Auspices of Rajendra Prasad Academy, New Delhi, 2004, p. 86.

The fragmented and uncertain electoral verdict is evident in the data presented there, especially in view of the absence of any pre-election coalition led separately by any of the three largest single parties : INC, JD and BJP. The growing regionalization of the party system is also clear if we bear in mind the fact that the nation-wide spread of the Congress had considerably shrunk. Double-digit seats could be won by INC from only five states (Andhra Pradesh 22; Odisha 16; Maharashtra 15; Rajasthan 12, and Gujarat 10) (These additional data are not included in the table for economy of space). The national pretentions of the BJP were contradicted by its continued failure to outgrow its support-base mainly limited to the Hindi-speaking states plus Maharashtra, Gujarat and Karnataka.

The JD too, including Samata Party (SP) as a Janata parivar party, was basically limited to Bihar, Karnataka, and Odisha. Its formal or informal understanding with regional parties and the left wing did, however, give it a wider spread, though still short of majority. To stake its claim to form the government, it had to shed its non-Cogressism and depend on a legislative coalition with Congress without the latter joining its executive coalition (i.e. the cabinet). The INC itself appeared divided and generally reluctant to join the government, and the CPI went on record opposing the idea of a coalition government in which Congress was also present. The Congress nonetheless extended its support to the UF government from outside without being a part of the government or the coordination committee.

The two successive United Front governments managed their internal policy and personality differences reasonably well, thanks to the more amicable premiership roles of H.D. Deva Gowda and I.K. Gujral (in comparison to the domineering and impulsive V.P. Singh) and the mediation among the centrist Janata Dal, policy preferences of the left-wing parties, and regional susceptibilities of the state-based parties in the coalition by an active steering coordination committee convened by the TDP Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Chandrababu Naidu. What brought the two UF governments down prematurely was the withdrawal of support to them by the Congress President Sitaram Kesri : first on the issue of the replacement of Deva Gowda by Gujral for the alleged insensitivities of the former to Congress Party interests, which was grudgingly conceded; and then on the INC's insistence on dropping DMK ministers from the government following the indictment of its government for security lapse in Tamil Nadu in the Jain Commission Report inquiring into Rajiv Gandhi's assassination in 1991. The UF government refused to yield to the Congress pressure this time and preferred to go out of office. Kesri's plans for an alternative coalition government headed by the INC and possibly supported by the UF parties and others backfired with the President ordering for fresh electoral mandate instead.

In the Lok Sabha election that followed in the spring of 1998, three major inter-party coalitional configurations shaped up:

1. The United Front Comprising the Janata Dal, TDP, CPI, CPI (M), AGP, HLDR, BSP (allied only in Haryana), DMK, TMC, Samajwadi Party, Left Front in West Bengal and Left Democratic Front in Kerara;

2. The Congress alliance including UMF in Assam, RJD in Bihar, RJP in Gujarat, JMM in Bihar, RPI and Samajwadi Party (allied in Maharashtra), BSP and CPI (allied only in Punjab), BKPP in Uttar Pradesh and SFB and Jharkhand Party in West Bengal; and

3. BJP alliance consisting of Shiv Sena, Samata Party, Haryana Vikas Party, Lok Shakti, Biju Janata Dal, Shiromani Akali Dal (Badal), AIADMK, Janata Party, PMK, Rajiv Tamil Nadu Congress, BSP (J), All India Trinamool Congress and BSP (allied only in Punjab).

These pre-poll alliances underwent some changes after the electoral outcome. These realignments were to the benefit of the BJP-led alliance. Its post-poll allies were the TDP (Naidu), National Conference, HLD (R), and Arunachal Congress. In the final count after the realignments in the Parliament, the BJP alliance came to comprise 17 parties, the united Front after the desertions were left with eight parties, and Congress and its allies consisted of seven parties. Apart from these, there were eight unattached parties plus five independents, four of whom shifted their allegiance to the BJP and its allies, that come to be called National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The vote and seat shares of these competing coalitions in 1998 are given in Table 4.

TABLE 4

PERCENT VOTES AND SEATS OF COMPETING COALITIONS IN LOK SABHA, 1998

Coalitions

Percent Votes

Seats

NDA

46.61

254

Congress & Allies

26.42

144

United Front

11.74

Jan Morcha

4.40

Others

10.82

Total

100%

545

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org,accessed on 13 March, 2012.

Like the United Front, the National Democratic Alliance too was assisted by a coordination committee of participating parties. However, inter-party differences on issues of public policies and governance tended to be addressed more frequently bilaterally and ministerially rather than by the coordination committee outside the cabinet. The fall of the government this time again came when the AIADMK led by Jayalalitha withdrew its outside support in late 1998, forcing elections in less than a year in September 1999. The caretaker NDA government had in the meantime to deal with the Kargil war with Pakistan caused by clandestine infiltration detected between the withdrawal of AIADMK support and the conduct of elections delayed on this account.

The interparty alliances among the parties that configured in the 1999 Lok Sabha election are presented in Table 5 below.

TABLE 5

INTER-PARTY ALLIANCES IN 1999 LOK SABHA ELECTION (NUMBER OF SEATS)

BJP-led NDA

INC-led

Alliance

Left Front

Others

BJP 182

INC 112

CPI (M) 32

BSP 14

BJD 10

AIADMK 10

CPI 4

SP 126

DMK 12

KECM 1

Forward Bloc 2

Independents & others 21

HVC 1

MUL 2

KEC 1

Total 61

INLD 5

RJD 7

RSP 3

JD (U) 20

RLD 2

Total 42

Loktantrik 1

Total 134

Congress

MDMK 4

MGDK 1

MSCP 1

PMK 5

SAD 2

Trinamool Congress 8

TDP 29

NC 4

Total 300

Note: Total Lok Sabha seats 543; Elections held for 538; Results declared until tabulation 537.

Source:Indian Recorder, New Delhi, 1999, p. 4865.

In terms of electoral and parliamentary groupings in 1999 the party system presented a four-fold division. There was the BJP-led NDA consisting of 16 parties, together accounting for 300 seats. The leading party in this coalition, BJP, with 182 Lok Sabha seats accounted for 23.75 percent of valid votes polled and 33.50 percent of seats. For the first time in years the NDA grew out of the travails of minority coalition governments and formed a majority coalition government and completed its five-year electoral mandate. It faced two opposition groupings in the electoral and parliamentary arenas : Congress and its allies (six parties) consisting of 134 MPs and the Left Front comprising 42 MPs. The leading party in the alliance, the INC, with 112 seats accounted for 28.30 percent of valid votes polled and 21 percent of seats. The Left Front roped in five parties with the CPI (M) leading it and individually contributing 5.40 percent of valid votes and 6.10 percent of Lok Sabha seats. Finally, there were the unattached parties : BSP and Samajwadi Party, besides other smaller parties and non-party independent MPs.

The second NDA government set a new trend of an amicable "coalition dharma", the term frequently flaunted by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and turned the corner on endemic governmental instability since 1989. Yet in the trail of the impressive performance of the BJP in the 2003 round of Assembly elections in five states, Vajpayee gambled with a snap poll in 2004 for the Lok Sabha too almost a year ahead of the schedule. The configuration of parties in terms of inter-party coalitions and electoral performance in the 2004 Lok Sabha election is presented in Table 6 below.

TABLE 6

COALITIONS AND PARTIES IN LOK SABHA ELECTION, 2004

Parties & Groupings

No. of Seats

% Votes

% Seats

Congress-led UPA

INC

145

26.21

65.90

RJD

1.86

10.91

DMK

1.79

7.27

NCP

1.76

4.09

PMK

0.55

2.73

TRS

0.62

2.27

JMM

0.46

2.27

MDMK

0.43

1.82

LJP

0.51

1.82

JKPDP

0.07

0.45

RPI (A)

0.09

0.45

MUL

0.10

0.45

RPI (G)

0.07

0.0

0.05

0.0

IUML

0.0

KC (M)

0.05

0.0

Total

221

BJP-led NDA

BJP

138

21.48

74.19

1.79

6.45

BJD

1.29

5.91

SAD

0.89

4.30

JD (U)

1.98

4.30

TDP

3.01

2.69

AITC

1.99

1.07

NPE

0.18

1.53

MNF

0.05

1.53

AIADMK

2.17

Total

186

Other Parties (Unattached)

CPI (M)

5.6

7.92

4.06

6.63

BSP

5.08

3.50

CPI

1.38

1.84

JD (S)

1.52

RSP

0.41

0.55

RLD

0.57

AIFB

0.35

0.55

AGP

0.53

JKNC

0.11

IFDP

0.07

0.09

AIMIM

0.11

BNP

0.04

NLP

0.09

SDF

0.04

SJPR

0.08

Independents

0.06

Note: There were 256 other parties that contested without winning a single seat.

Source:Election Commission of India website http://www.eci.gov.in/GE2004, for statistical data. Information about coalitional groupings and unattached status of parties supplied by the author.

The Lok Sabha elected in 2004 presented the spectacle of two competing coalitions – Congress-led UPA (16 parties) and BJP-led NDA (10 parties). The former bagged 220 seats whereas the latter's tally remained at 186. The rest of the parties were more or less unattached. The two coalitional formations were each led by one of the two major national parties and the rest of the parties in each grouping were mostly regional or state parties, though some qualified nominally as national parties in terms of Election Commission's criteria. Notably, the NDA was a pre-poll coalition with a common manifesto, but the UPA was formed post-poll and a common minimum programme was formally agreed to. Following the unraveling of the left-of-centre United Front by 1998, the right-of-centre NDA formed in 1998-99 has tended to endure, and the UPA, somewhat ambivalent on the right-left axis, formed in 2004 has also more or less proved to be durable in retrospect at this writing (spring 2012). The INC as the leading party in the UPA is cleft between neoliberalism and welfare for the am admi (common man) partly as a legacy from the past and partly under electoral compulsions. Similarly, the BJP as the leading party in the NDA is split between its swadeshi leaning and business liberalism and neoliberalism or globalism. On cultural issues the INC and its allies are animated by Muslim minorityism whereas the BJP and its allies are inclined to be multicultural secularist, the BJP itself somewhat Hindu-hegemonist secularist. The presence of important regional parties in both the UPA and NDA makes them multicultural federalist or pluri-nationalist.

As it happened, Sonia Gandhi, the obvious choice for heading the UPA government formed in 2004, firmly declined the position, nominating Manmohan Singh instead for Prime Minister's job. And she accepted the position of the chairman of the National Advisory Council (NAC) of the UPA government. In addition to the parties formally joining the UPA council of ministers, the left wing parties decided to support it from the outside, i.e., the parliamentary floor. Later, when the left parties backed out midway through the five-year mandate on the issue of the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal made by the government, the government survived with the supportive voting by the Samajwadi Party. Like the preceding NDA regime, the UPA government too completed its full term in office. Whatever other problems of coalitional governance, the problem of instability had at least been overcome.

The 2009 Lok Sabha election renewed the mandate of the UPA for a second term, making it indeed the first federal, coalition government since 1989 to get re-elected, and that too with a stronger position for the INC vis-a-vis its regional allies within the ruling coalition and its reinforcement in relation to the opposition in the Parliament generally (Table 7).

Table 7

Coalitions and Parties in Lok Sabha Election, 2009

Parties & Groupings

No. of Seats (% Seats)

% Votes Validity Polled

UPA

INC

206

28.55

NCP

2.4

AITC

3.20

DMK

1.83

JKNC

0.55

JMC

0.40

IUML

0.21

VCK

0.18

KC (M)

0.10

AIMIM

RPI (A)

0.09

NDA

BJP

116

18.80

JD (U)

1.52

1.55

RLD

0.44

SAD

0.96

TRS

0.62

AGP

0.43

INLD

0.31

Third Front

CPI (M)

5.33

CPI

1.43

RSP

AIFB

BSP

6.17

BJP

1.59

AIADMK

1.67

TDP

2.51

JD (S)

0.82

MDMK

0.27

HJC

0.20

PMK

0.47

Fourth Front

SP (UP)

3.42

RJD

1.27

LJP

0.45

Other Unattached Parties & Independents

AUDF

0.52

JVM (P)

0.23

NPF

0.20

BPF

0.16

0.12

BVA

0.05

SDF

0.04

Independents

5.19

Notes: Total seats in the Lok Sabha 543. A total of seven National parties and 394 state parties contested the election. In the table above, to differentiate between the common abbreviations of Samajwadi Party and Swabhimani Party, I have added U.P. in brackets after the former.

Source:Election Commission of India Website. Information about coalitional groupings or lack thereof among parties supplied by the author.

A comparison between coalitional configurations in 2004 and 2009 brings out a number of notable points. First, while a few core parties like the INC, NCP, DMK, IUML, KC (M), etc. have continued to be parts of the UPA over the period between the 2004 and 2009 general elections, there have been notable shifts of parties like RJD to the Fourth Front, PMK to the Third Front, TRS to NDA, MDMK to the Third Front, etc. Similarly, whereas the BJP, Shiv Sena, BJD, SAD, AIADMK and JD(U) have adhered to the NDA during this time spam, AITC has shifted to the UPA and TDP to the Third Front. Secondly, as to the parties that were unattached to any coalition during the 2004 election, the left parties (CPI-M, CPI, AIFB and RSP) came forward to extend support to the UPA government afterwards on some issues. On similar critical occasions the BSP and Samajwadi Party played the good samaritan by giving parliamentary support without joining the government with ministerial births. Some alleged that this was done to avoid central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) investigations on orders from the central government in corruption charges leveled against the leaders of these parties. They may also have calculations to keep their options open for joining the UPA later, as Congress is a more likelier ally for them than the BJP. Thirdly, the broadly bipolar coalitional division between the UPA and NDA in 2004 tended to take on a multi-polar tendency in 2009 as was evident by the attempt to form a third and a fourth front, albeit largely ephemeral. Generally, only the INC, BJP and communist parties display certain recognizable and stable programmatic or ideological positions or posturing, whereas other parties in the system, even though not totally lacking positions on issues of identities and interests, are more free-floating from one coalition to another. Thus the two coalitional configurations are crystallized at the core and shifting at the outer circumference. Even at this writing (spring 2012), winds of change are buffeting the two presently operative coalitions : the UPA and the NDA. The 2011 round of Assembly elections (in Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry) significantly altered the political chess board in states. The INC was reelected in Assam, AITC-INC alliance trounced the long-ruling CPI-M-led Left Front in West Bengal, AIADMK-led alliance replaced the ruling DMK-led alliance in Tamil Nadu, INC-led United Democratic Front dislodged the CPI-M-led Left Democratic Front from office in Kerala and the newly breakaway N. Rangasamy Congress defeated the ruling INC-DMK alliance in Puducherry. Electoral changes in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal in particular appeared to be pregnant with some turbulence for the UPA. This was due to the cooling of relations between the INC and DMK and the new warmth between the former and the AIADMK, on the one hand, and the emboldened Mamata Banerjee in her already abrasive relations with the INC, on the other. The tensions were somehow managed, however, until the 2012 round of Assembly elections in U.P. Uttrakhand, Punjab, Goa, and Manipur early in the year when the UPA boat was rocked again by electoral turnovers and some policy issues. The UPA ally AITC West Bengal Chief Minister Manata Banerjee had been taking critical view on the Union government's policies on several issues, often on the eleventh hour reopening seemingly settled matters, e.g. on Teesta river water agreement with Bangladesh causing a great diplomatic embarrassment to the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, right on the eve of his Dhaka visit in 2011. This pattern of behaviour continued on a number of domestic issues such as the government's intent to allow 100 percent foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail trade, enact a Lokpal / Lokayukta bill, and set up a National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) in pursuance of the Justice M.M. Punchhi Commission Report on Centre-State Relations (2010)6. All these issues raised a hornets' nest as alleged threats to the federal structure and encroachments on the jurisdictions of state governments.

Besides the BJP opposition in Parliament, Chief Ministers Narendra Modi (BJP / Gujarata), Naveen Patnaik (BJD / Odisha), Nitesh Kumar (JD-U-BJP alliance/ Bihar), Mamata Banerjee (AITC-INC) alliance/ West Bengal), J. Jayalalitha (AIADMK / Tamil Nadu), plus the TDP leader of Andhra Pradesh, N. Chandrababu Naidu, found themselves on the same side of the political fence on this issue, complaining about the lack of consultation and consensus on this alleged unconstitutional move by the government. This prompted the political analysts to begin projecting two alternative coalitional configurations in the times ahead: (a) a third front between the UPA and NDA being canvassed since the 2009 Lok Sabha election, and (b) a fourth front, dubbed the 'federal front', among AITMC, BJD, JD (U), TDP and AIADMK. The fissure between the AITC and INC further widened on the issue of raise in passenger and freight charges in the Railway budget presented to the Parliament by the Minister of Railways Dinesh Trivedi (AITC) and the hell raised by Mamata Banerjee on not being consulted and demanding the roll back of the hike and replacement of Trivedi by her party's new nominee for the portfolio, Mukul Roy.

The 2012 round of Assembly elections gave a mandate for a second term to the SAD-BJP coalition government headed by the Prakash Singh Badal, replaced the BJP government in Uttrakhand by the Congress, shifted the BJP from the opposition to the treasury benches in Congress-ruled Goa, and re-elected the Congress in Manipur. The most consequential for the further prospects of the federal coalition government was the electoral turnover in U.P. from the ruling BSP government of Mayawati to the Samajwadi Party that passed on the baton from the Veteran Mulayam Singh Yadav to his young son Akhilesh Yadav. The analysis in the aftermath of the formation of the Samajwadi Party government projected a somewhat uncertain double possibility of this party either joining forces with the inchoate “federal front” mentioned above or replacing the unpredictable and impulsive Mamata Banerjee in the UPA coalition. The latter possibility appears more likely by some early straws in the wind.

PARTY SYSTEM EVOLUTION

Since the first general election in 1952, one can delineate at least six phases of the evolution of the party system in India at the national level : (1) one-party dominant system under the aegis of the Indian National Congress (1952-1969), which covers the first general election to the fourth general election in 1967; (2) the first major breach in the one-party Congress dominance in the 1967 general election that caused a major reduction in the dominance of the Congress Party and its debacle in nine of the then 18 states of India; (3) restoration of the Congress dominance in the 1971 Lok Sabha election and the Assembly elections that followed soon thereafter; (4) the phase of non-Congress governments in New Delhi and some major states that followed in the trail of the 1977 Lok Sabha election and some Assembly elections that followed in 1978; (5) the return of the Congress governments at the centre and most states in 1980; and (6) the transformation of Congress dominance into a multiparty system with federal coalitional and / or minority governments in 1989 Lok Sabha election to-date.

The first phase of Indian party system has been conceptualized as the "Congress system" by Rajni Kothari7 and 'one-party dominant system' by W.H. Morris-Jones8. During this phase, elections were a multi-party affair, but the Congress was voted to power time and again with overwhelming parliamentary majorities.

In the three general election during this phase (1952, 1957, 1962) the seat share of the INC in the Lok Sabha ranged from 75.10 percent to 74.44 percent (see Table 8). Indeed, this overwhelming majority in the Lok Sabha was also more or less replicated in the Rajya Sabha as well as in almost all Vidhan Sabhas in the sates. Thus the Congress Party's dominance was replicated bicamerally as well as federally at the state level.

It may, however be pointed out that this dominance was based on plurality rather than majority of votes as India follows the first-past-the-post system of representation instead of majority or proportional representation. For example, the high water mark of 75.10 percent of Congress Lok Sabha seats in 1957 and then again in 1962 were accompanied by 47.7 and 44.7 percentages of its votes in the two respective elections. This wide discrepancy in vote-seat ratio is common in elections based on plurality electoral law, which tends to reward larger parties at the cost of smaller parties. It is relevant here to refer to the theorization of Maurice Duverger9 and William Ricker10 that the plurality representation generally produces a two-party system, while the proportional representation commonly results in a multiparty system. To quote Riker, "In short, when the definition of winning forces candidates to maximise votes in order to win (as in plurality system), they have strong motives to create a two-party system; but when the definition of winning does not require them to maximise votes (as in runoff proportional system), then this motive for two parties is absent.”

The foregoing hypotheses are so consistently borne out in the Anglo-American, White Commonwealth (where plurality electoral law and two-party system are/were the norm) and in the West European democracies (where proportional representation and multiparty system are the prevailing pattern) that Duverger and Riker assert an iron-law of political science in this context. However, the Indian experience generally (and the Canadian experience since the 1993 House of Commons elections) do not bear this so-called iron law out. The deviation of Canada from this general rule may be attributed to the sharpening of cultural and regional cleavages in Canada to the extent of alienation in the Western provinces and separatism in Quebec since the late 1970s. In the Indian case, the homogenising effect of the anti-colonial nationalist movement engendered an one-party Congress dominant system earlier, and subsequently as this legacy became weak there emerged a multiparty system.

This phase of Congress dominance coincided with the prime ministerships of Jawaharlal Nehru and Lal Bahadur Shastri and the pre-1969 premiership of Indira Gandhi. The style of electoral politics typical of this phase may be called the "locality-oriented pluralist network model” of political mobilization by the grassroots Congress workers at the base overlaid by a democratically constructed national, state and district Congress organizational leaders through internal party elections and general elections led by Congress legislators in the Assemblies and the Parliament. This model displayed complex multi-layered factional and party-political structures and processes that were locally articulated along caste, community, and factional lines in villages, blocs, and districts and aggregated at the state level by reasonably autonomous sets of party elites in various states. These intermediary power structures were topped by a nationally aggregating supra-regional coalition of national leaders.

Nehru's prime ministership style may be called a “pluralist-parliamentary” one, to distinguish it from the “neo-patrimonial” prime ministerial style of Indira Gandhi and the “federal” premiership style of the post-1989 Prime Ministers in the coalition governments.11 This was the period of “consociational” dominance of the Congress Party ruling with overwhelming majorities in the Parliament and in almost state Legislatures. At the frosty Himalayan heights of the Congress power structure sat Nehru, ingeneously redesigning the “mixed” economy with the dominant public sector. Especially after Ballabhbhai Patel's demise in December 1950, the “Nehru-Patel duumvirate” yielded place to Nehru's unquestioned democratic dominance in the party and the government12.. In the words of Sarvopalli Gopal13 "To Nehru democratic government was a fine art, the achievement of a cooperation within a series of widening circles which gave a sense of participation of everyone involved. He exploited his personal dominance to secure, as he hoped, its own destruction. It was a magnificent effort which did not quite come off." Gopal offers instances of autonomy and free exchange of views between the Prime Minister and the opposition party leaders and state government functionaries. As Prime Minister, Nehru used to write fortnightly letters to the Chief Ministers on various problems facing the governments of the day.14

However, despite Nehru's predominance in the government and party and his immense popularity in the country at large, Nehru often appeared tilting at the windmills of the semi-feudal society through the only partially successful land reforms and rural community development measures. The levers of power were operated by the conservative urban and rural middle-class leadership well-versed in mobilizing the masses and moderating the Nehruvian rhetorics and reforms. These were stalled in state legislatures and in their administrative implementation. In electoral campaigns during this phase Nehru treaded the land like a colossus, but only occasionally and only partly digging into the multi-layered village and district factional alliances; a more pervasive reach to the grassroots was yet to come. He was deputised in his endeavours by a largely autonomous but generally deferential Congress leadership in states. Towards the fag end of his pluralist-parliamentary prime ministership there developed in the party a Syndicate of powerful regional leaders that played a crucial role in influencing Lal Bahadur Shastri's succession to Nehru in 1964, and Indira Gandhi`s succession to Shastri in 1966.15

The second phase of the post-Independence party system of India was a brief spell of multipartisan configuration from the fourth general election in 1967 to the 1971 mid-term Lok Sabha election and the 1972 round of Assembly elections. In 1967 Congress majority in the Lok Sabha was considerably reduced and representation of non-Congress parties improved. This election also saw the Congress lose in several states in Assembly elections. Post-election politics of defection in several states on an unprecedented scale finally led to the formation of non-Congress coalition governments in several north Indian states. Congress lost Tamil Nadu to the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and practically all major north Indian states to non-Congress coalitions including all parties other than the Congress ranging from the right to left. The number of these non-Congress-ruled states reached eight out of the then 18 states. In November 1969 the Indian National Congress suffered a major split between the Indira-led faction and the Syndicate faction giving rise to two Congress parties: the Congress (Ruling or Indira) and the Congress (Organization or Opposition). The split broadly followed a dividing line between the parliamentary wing of the party dominated by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the organizational wing dominated by the regional party bosses forming the informal group called Syndicate by the journalists. Programmatically, the Syndicate was inclined to be right of the centre whereas the Congress led by Indira Gandhi flaunted a left-of-centre, pro-poor public image. Following the split, the ruling Congress still remained the largest single party in the Parliament but its government was reduced to a minority status. It survived with the support of nearly half a dozen left-wing and regional parties, which did not join the government, however. Moreover the Congress governments and state party organizations in Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and the party organization in metropolitan Bombay (now Mumbai) (where the Congress organization enjoyed the status of a 'Pradesh' or 'state' unit) did not align with Indira Gandhi's Congress.16

However, the non-Congress coalition governments in the North Indian states turned out to be extremely unstable due to their internal ideological incompatibilities, politics of defection, and attempts at destabilization from the Congress government at the centre (Paul Brass 1968). Moreover, Indira Gandhi, forcing the right-wing old guard Syndicate faction of the Congress Party of the Congress Party to split in November 1969 and calling a snap poll in the spring of 1971 won the election hands down on the slogan of 'garibi hatao' with a massive mandate.17

The Congress restoration in 1970 under a hugely popular charismatic mass appeal of Indira Gandhi marked the third phase of the Indian party system that covered the turbulent 1970s, more precisely from the 1971 to the 1977 Lok Sabha elections. The period marked the unprecedented centralization of political power in the hands of the Prime Minister. This new system of Congress predominance was different from the Congress system of the preceding Nehru era. In the Congress Party's mass membership organization intra-party elections at various levels of the polity came to be dispensed with in favour of nominations by the higher levels of party hierarchs with explicit or tacit approval from the top by a coterie around the Prime Minister herself. The autonomy of the state governments also became a casualty, as the practice of the virtual selection of Chief Ministers by the Prime Minister herself (who was often also the Congress Party President) and their subsequent endorsement by the Congress Legislature Parties became the common procedure rather than the exception. This new “pyramidal” power structure and “neopatrimonial” federal structure stamped out the pluralist democratic features of the Nehru era in which the intermediary political elites in the party and the governments counted. Under Indira Gandhi the Congress Party was transformed into a personalized political machine entirely dependent on the direct charismatic mass appeal by an “imperious” Prime Ministership superimposed on an increasingly authoritarian governmental structure periodically renewed in plebiscitary elections.18

Before long, the Indira Gandhi Congress regime came under the clouds of an extra-parliamentary mass movement on the issue of corruption and authoritarianism in the Congress government led by Morarji Desai in Gujarat and Jayaprakash Narayan in Bihar and allover north India down to Bangalore. The protests also mounted from the opposition parties and non-Congress state governments. The regime also faced a big general strike by the government monopoly Railways employees and workers led by the trade unions affiliated with the Socialist Party. There were some unsettling judicial decisions against the Prime Minister as well, especially after she imposed internal emergency in 1975 under article 352 of the constitution, arrested the entire opposition and movement leadership and enforced press censorship.19

Indira Gandhi's drive to personal power and appropriation of state apparatus also pitched her in a running battle with the big business, princes, landed interests producing and traders marketing surplus grains.

The Prime Minister had initially gave in to the demand of “recall” of the legislators of Gujarat under the pressure of the fast unto death by Moraji Desai, but subsequently ruthlessly suppressed the JP Movement and dug her heels by extending the life of the Lok Sabha by a year beyond its five-year mandate. But finally she abruptly called for a fresh mandate in the spring of 1977. Her emergency regime was roundly routed, bringing to power the first non-Congress government in New Delhi and second round of non-Congress governments in all major north Indian states formed by the Janata Party. This new party emerged foenix-like from the ashes of the JP Movement by merging the major non-Congress and non-communist parties that had participated in the JP Movement. They were also joined by the Congress for Democracy, a group of prominent central and state Congress leaders who defected from the Congress Party in the wake of its electoral debacle.

The fourth phase of the party system evolution displayed a bi-partisan and federalizing tendency, albeit rather brief and abortive. From 1977 to mid-1979 (rather 1980 in a way when the next general election was held), only two parties – Janata and Congress – accounted for 80 percent of Lok Sabha seats and 77.5 percent of votes. Moreover, from a predominantly parliamentary or one-party dominant Congress governments at both the union and state levels in the past, we witnessed a transition to a federalized governance marked by the majority of the Janata Party government in the Lok Sabha, opposition Congress majority in the federal second chamber (Rajya Sabha), Janata Party governments in the major north Indian states, Congress governments in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala, and AIADMK in power in Tamil Nadu.

Although formally an one-party government, by and large ( discounting Janata's alliance with the Shiromani Akali Dal in the Central government), Janata Party itself was, for all practical purposes, a confederal political formation, as its five constituents – Congress (organization), Bharatiya Lok Dal, Bharatiya Jana Sangh, Socialist Party, and Congress for Democracy – never carried the process of integration into a single party to its logical conclusion and continued to function unilaterally with a minimal formal central party organization. This kind of factionalism was rampant in the working of the de facto federal coalition government as well as in the running of the Janata Party state governments devided among the major constituents of the Janata Party as their exclusive spheres of power. By mid-1979 the Janata Party government in New Delhi collapsed under its internal factional contradictions without completing its five-year mandate. With the Morarji Desai Janata government at the centre gone, the party's state governments too because vulnerable. The Home Minister and Deputy Prime Minister in this government, Chaudhary Charan Singh, had dismissed the Congress governments in the states under article 356 on coming to power in New Delhi on the specious plea that the 1977 Lok Sabha elections had shown that the people in the Congress-ruled states had lost their trust in those governments! The Congress government led by Indira Gandhi on coming to power in the 1980 Lok Sabha election was to pay the Janata Party state governments in the same coin by dismissing them an bloc!

The fifth phase of the party system at the national level, dating from 1980 to 1989, may be called the Indira Gandhi and the Rajiv Gandhi phase of Congress restoration. It meant a reversal of the federalizing trend of the Janata phase, at least in part, although it was more a characteristic of the mother's regime than that of the son, which displayed a somewhat greater receptivity to regionalism and federalism. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi signed or witnessed a series of comprehensive regional ethnic accords with the Shiromani Akali Dal, Asom Gana Parishad, Mizo National Front, and Tripura National Volunteers. The 1980s were also marked by a divergence between the national party system and state party systems. The Congress restoration in 1980 and its reelection in 1984 under Rajiv Gandhi in the trail of Indira Gandhi's assassination coincided with its defeat in the state Assembly elections in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Sikkim in 1983. In Karnataka, though, there appeared the interesting phenomenon of split voting – the electorate voting the Janata Party to power in the state in 1983 but sending a larger Congress contingent to the Lok Sabha in 1984.

The inter-party dynamics that developed in the 1980s showed the Congress in power at the centre and the majority of states (including the major ones) flanked by a number of regional and nominally national parties in power in some states, on the one hand, and a number of formally all-India but practically regional opposition parties, on the other. Two major configurations of non-Congress parties appeared in the 1980s. First, a series of conclaves of non-Congress parties mainly from the outer circles of non-Hindi rimlands took place : (1) the Southern Chief Ministers' council convened at the initiative of the Janata Party CM Ramakrishna Hegde of Karnataka and attended by all the non-Congress CMs of the South (Congress CM of Kerala heading the United Democratic Front government was invited but chose to stay away) (the council has not met subsequently); (2) the Vijayavada conclave of non-Congress CMs from allover India hosted by the Telugu Desam Party CM N.T. Rama Rao of Andhra Pradesh, the Srinagar conclave called by the National Conference CM Farooq Abdullah of Jammu & Kashmir, and the Calcutta conclave convened by the Left Front CM Jyoti Basu of West Bengal. These occasions were used mainly to voice the common apprehensions against central interference and interventions in their states by the Congress government in New Delhi, and their own ideas about restructuring the federal arrangement with greater powers and revenue resources to the states, among others.

The second major cluster of opposition parties was that of non-Congress, non-communist all-India parties in the Hindu-speaking states and neighbouring Odisha, Gujarat, and Maharashtra. The 1980s witnessed two alliances of such parties : (1) the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) forged by the Bharatiya Janata Party and Lok Dal, after the latter's brief flirtations with Jagjivan Ram's Janata (J) (subsequently Congress – J); and (2) the United Front (UF) consisting of Janata Party, Congress (Sharad Pawar), H.N. Bahuguna's Socialist Democratic Party, Ratibhai Adani's Rashtriya Congress, Maneka Gandhi's Sanjay Manch, Chandrajit Yadav's Janvadi Party. The NDA sought to realign the predominantly rural / peasant Lok Dal and predominantly urban BJP – the two factional constituents of the Janata Party earlier whose collision had set off the chain reaction leading to the collapse of the ruling Janata Party in 1979. The BJP`s drawing closer to the Lok Dal was dictated by electoral calcuations; it reflected the ideological moderation of the Hindu Right BJP as evidenced by its willingness to rub shoulders with the former Congressmen and Socialists in the Lok Dal. The Janata Dal - Janata Party became Janata Dal in 1988 following the merger with it of the Jan Morcha led by V.P. Singh, a Minister in the Rajiv Gandhi Congress government who had defected in 1987 – was at the head of the United Front. The Front was an odd assortment of essentially “Congress-culture” parties – all narrowly regional and even personal following of some leaders. The leadership of this train-compartment like company mainly comprised former Congressmen in some Hindi-speaking states and adjacent states who had broken away from the Congress at various points in time, much like the periodically shed antlers a barasingha, during the 1970s and 1980s. Only the Janata Party / Dal had a modicum of wider, often rural, base, including a state government in Karnataka in collaboration with the Karnataka Kranti Ranga (a Congress Indira splinter), the BJP, and the two communist parties. It was a Janata minority government supported by other parties from outside the government. The ruling Karnataka unit of the Janata Party appeared, however, to be somewhat at odds with its national-level party organization in the political wilderness.

The major communist parties kept aloof from the foregoing groupings of non-Congress parties. The CPI and CPI (M) continued to maintain their separate identities, unity between whom remained as illusive as unity among the socialist parties had been during much of the 1950s and 1960s. They differed in their assessment of the Congress – always a major factor in the formulation of party lines by them (the socialists as much as the communists). The CPI(M) pursued a rather mutually contradictory two-pronged strategy, one arm of which was a broad “anti-authoritarian front” (which in effect meant an anti-Congress front), and the other arm a “left democratic front”. The former could include even the rightist BJP which the latter excluded. The CPI's formulation, on the other hand, made an ingenious distinction between the basically sound foreign policy of the Congress government at the centre and their anti-working class domestic policies, the corollary being, of course, that the CPI would support the former but oppose the latter.

The sixth and the latest phase of the party system is the current one, which was ushered in by the 1989 Lok Sabha election and which still continues. This paper, in fact, starts with a discussion of this multiparty system with federal coalition and / or minority governments, and does not need to be repeated here. Instead, we proceed to the concluding section of this paper devoted to the question of party system and electoral reforms.

PARTY SYSTEM & ELECTORAL REFORMS

It was symptomatic of the approach of the framers of the Indian constitution that, while they made the largest constitution in the world for India, they left the party system entirely to be evolved by the civil society through convention as in the West. The Constituent Assembly Debates show that, whatever other anxieties about the future of democracy in the country on other accounts, the founding fathers did not have any worries about the strength of the party system. About the electoral system their concerns are, of course, evident in the special care they took in devising an exceptionally strong Election Commission of India under article 324 of the constitution. It is the only constitutionally entrenched election commission with such security of tenure and autonomy of action in comparative government and politics. Such bodies in other countries are set up under parliamentary statutes. The Supreme Court of India has opined that the powers of the Election Commission must be interpreted liberally with great amplitude to the extent of the construction that where the election laws are silent the commission can fill in the gaps to ensure free and fair elections which are a part of the “basic structure” of the constitution that are unamendable.20 But when it comes to political parties, the makers do not display any special concern. In his last major address in the Constituent Assembly when Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the chairman of the drafting committee, rose to reply to the debate on the draft constitution, he mused on the future prospects of the new constitution. He said its success would primarily depend on (a) the growth of democratic culture and conventions, and (b) the bureaucracy or administration.21 I wish he had not specifically omitted the growth of a democratic party system in this context. The absence of such a party system is today proving to be the Achilles heel for a healthy working of a successful parliamentary federal government.

Over the past decades a number of citizen's as well as parliamentary committees and constitutional commissions have been proposing packages of electoral and party reforms. Among these, the more prominent ones have been the committee appointed by Jayaprakash Narayan on behalf of the civil society with Justice (Rtd.) V.R. Krishna Iyer as the chair in the late 1970s and the committees chaired by Dinesh Goswami and Indrajit Gupta respectively and appointed by the Parliament and Government of India in the late 1980s and 1990s. A Law Commission Report in 1999 also proposed a comprehensive package of reforms in our electoral and party systems. The Election Commission of India has also been proposing reforms for conduct of free and fair elections from time to time.22 However, the most comprehensive package of reforms have been proposed by the National Commission to Review of Working of the Constitution in 2002.23 Chapter 4 of its Report, entitled "Electoral Processes and Political Parties", recommends a comprehensive legislation regulating the formation and functioning of political parties and alliances of parties in India. This law should aim at ensuring all-inclusive, democratically constituted and functioning political parties and coalitions among them, maintaining publicly open and audited systematic and regular accounts of receipt of funds and expenditure. These political formations should be required to owe allegiance to the basic constitutional values, hold regular elections at an interval of three years at various levels of the party, and provide reservation / representation of a least 30 percent of organizational positions at various levels and in parliamentary and state legislative seats to women. The proposed law “should provide for compulsory registration for every political party or pre-poll alliance."

The Commission also recommends the raising of the bar for recognition of registered parties with the Election Commission of India as “state” and “national”' parties for allotment of exclusive electoral symbols. At present state parties are required to have (a) at least 6 percent of the votes polled plus at least 2 members in the Legislative Assembly or (b) at least 3 percent of seats in the Assembly. The existing criteria for recognition as a national party are (a) at least 6 percent of votes polled in a parliamentary election in at least 4 members in the Lok Sabha OR (b) at least 2 percent of the membership of the Lok Sabha drawn from at least 3 states. The NCRWC Report recommends that the Election Commission “should progressively increase the threshold criteria for eligibility for recognition so that the proliferation of smaller political parties is discouraged” (emphasis in the source itself).

In the context of the alarming rate of criminalization of politics, the NCRWC Report recommends that if a political party nominates a candidate convicted by a court in a criminal offence or with criminal offence or with criminal charge(s) framed against one by a court, "the candidate involved should be liable to be disqualified and the party deregistered and derecognized forthwith."

Besides these legally binding reforms via legislation, the NCRWC Report also recommends a number of desirable institutional innovations for political parties and corporate sector of the economy. Parties could consider adopting the leadership convention system for electing the top leader who would lead the election campaign as well as form the government or serve as the opposition leader(s) in the legislative branches in the nation and the states, as is the established practice in Canada and the USA. This would democratise the parties across the board and introduce a nationally aggregative or a federative process for containing party fragmentation and promoting emergence of national parties that are more functional in a parliamentary federal system of governance designed under our constitution. Moreover party foundations may also be established by parties "for planning, thinking, and research on crucial socio-economic issues facing the nation and educational cells for socializing their party cadres and preparing them for responsibilities of governance." Finally, the government could encourage the corporate sector “to establish an electoral trust which should be able to finance political parties on an equitable basis at the time of elections." The government should also permit "all legal and transparent donations upto a specified limit tax exempt and treat this tax loss to the state as its contribution to state funding of elections" (emphasis in the source itself).

CONCLUSION

In the growing ideological and democratic vacuity, almost all political parties have failed to mobilize genuine grassroots supports. In the legislative arenas too the fragmentation of the party system is sought to be bridged by amoral or immoral coalitions of governance and opposition through political wheeling and dealing, corruption and crime. Politics of defection that first surfaced in India in an alarming way in the aftermath of the 1967 general election have continued unabated. The 1985 anti-defection Act incorporated in the tenth schedule of the constitution has only raised the price of defection higher. In fact, the bribing of legislators to defect or for winning confidence votes, not only in states where it first made its appearance but also in the Parliament has become an uncontrolled and recurrent political menace. The Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) bribery case decided by the Supreme Court in 1999 indicting Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao brought out the chilling depths of moral and legal decadence to which Indian democracy has decended. In addition, instances of bribes for raising questions in Parliament, selling of ministerial and parliamentarians' discretions in allotment of services and utilities, and economic and political scams etc., have enormously multiplied since the 1990s. The biggest among the scams being investigated today involve all parties that have been in power at the national or state or local levels. And what is even more shocking is the depressing fact that investigations and judicial proceedings have been triggered not by the initiative of the opposition of parties but by Public Interest Litigations, judicial and civil society activism and the media.

The leakage of taped conversations of the corporate lobbyist Nira Radia have revealed how the corporate capitalist sector has begun to influence the news and views of supposedly free media as well as allocation of ministerial portfolios in the federal coalition governments headed by the national parties like the Indian National Congress in the context of the telecom 2-G spectrum allocation case.

The sites of democratic political action that rightfully belong to the party-political processes have been practically vacated by political parties. The decline and atrophy of the party system is therefore being partly compensated by judicial activism, investigative journalism, NGOs, civil society movements against corruption like those Anna Hazare, and the new social movements on environment and ecology, quality of life and services, child rights and gender justice, administrative and political transparency and accountability, human rights in general, etc. But the sustainability of these tendencies and trends depends on the overall democratic ambience and democratic deepening that cannot be optimistically taken for granted, as the foregoing analysis suggest.

Neoliberal policy shift in privileging the market over the state has been increasing the hiatus between the two major goals of the Indian constitution, i.e. democracy and social and economic justice. Indeed, the experience suggests that even the goal of democracy is being given a short shift in practice. This is fraught with serious implications for the survival of Indian democracy.

Raymond Plant in his important theoretical contribution to the debate on neoliberalism has aptly argued that without loyalty to and trust in it, the neoliberal order, for that matter any politico-economic order, cannot sustain itself. He goes on to say that a basic precondition for trust and loyalty are a high degree of democratic equality in society and a good deal of scope for democratic decision-making in the government. Plant persuasively argues that "the neoliberalism has rather limited views about both the scope of democracy and the scope of equality." Friedrich v. Hayek's belief that so long as the neoliberal order maintains material prosperity the moral questions about popular trust and loyalty in capitalism are held at bay. However, as Plant aptly observes, with most recent problems in global capitalism in view since the global recession of the late 2000s, there is nothing in the capitalist system to ensure continued growth without recession. And a recession may quickly erode the vertical popular trust in the system as well as the horizontal corporate trust among firms and individuals. Without there being the state to deflect the cost of recession from falling on the people or the weaker firms in the interest of social justice, the system may in fact plunge into deeper crises. "So material prosperity", concludes Raymond Plant, "cannot in fact be the ultimate guarantor of the popular legitimacy of the free market system. There has to be a source of trust and loyalty outside of that and neo-liberal thinkers have, I believe, to accept that the source of trust and loyalty have to be found outside the market."24

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. S.M. Lipset, "The Indispensability of Political Parties", Journal of Democracy, Vol. 11, No. 1, January 2000.

2. Election Commission of India, General Elections, 2009 (15th Lok Sabha), www.eci.nic.in, Accessed on 18.02.2012.

3. For a good study on this phase, see Paul R. Brass, "Coalition Politics in North India," The American Political Science Review, Vol. 62, No. 4, December 1968, pp. 1174-1191.

4. For a good study, see Bipan Chandra, In the Name of Democracy : J.P. Movement and the Emergency, New Delhi : Penguin Books, 2003.

5. Systematic and comprehensive studies of these coalition governments are still awaited. For good early overview studies, see M.P. Singh and Anil Mishra, eds., Coalition Politics in India : Problems and Prospects, New Delhi : Manohar, 2004.

6. India, Republic, Report of the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution, http: //lawmin.nic.in/nncrwc/ finalreport/volume 1. htm, 2002. Accessed on 4.12.2002. The 11-member NCRWC (inclusive of the chair) was headed by Justice M.N. Venkatachaliah, former Chief Justice of India.

7. Rajni Kothari, Politics in India, Boston : Lettle, Brown & Company, 1970, ch. 5.

8. W.H. Morris Jones.

9. Maurice Duverger, Political Parties (trans. from the French), New York : John Wiley Science Education, 1963, p. 217.

10. William H. Riker, "The Two-Party System and Duverger's Law : An Essay on the History of Political Science", The American Political Science Review, Vol. 76, No. , 1982, pp. 762-4.

11. M.P. Singh and Rekha Saxena, Indian Politics : Constitutional Foundations and Institutional Functioning, New Delhi : Prentice-Hall of India / PHI Learning Private Limited 2011, 2nd edition and 3rd reprint, ch. 5.

12. Michael Brecher, Political Succession in India, New Delhi : Oxford University Press, 1966.

13. Survepalli Gopal, Radhakrishnan : A Biography, New Delhi : Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 196.

14. Jawaharlal Nehru : Letters to Chief Ministers 1947-1964, Vol. 3, edited by G. Parthasarathi, published by Nehru Memorial Fund and distributed by Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1989.

15. Michael Brecher, op. cit.

16. M.P. Singh, Split in a Predominant Party : The Indian National Congress in 1969, New Delhi : Abhinav, 1981, Ch. 4.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Bipan Chandra, op. cit.

20. Supreme Court of India

21. India, Republic, Constituent Assembly Debates, Official Reports, Book 5, New Delhi : Lok Sabha Secretariat, 2003, 4th reprint, pp. 575-582.

22. M.P. Singh and Rekha Saxena, Indiaat the Polls : Parliamentary Elections in the Federal Phase, New Delhi : Orient Longman, 2003, ch. 9.

23. India, Republic, Report of the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution, op. cit., Ch. 4. All the subsequent discussion and quotes pertaining to this document are from Ch. 4.

24. Raymond Plant, The Neo-Liberal State, New York : Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 267-270.

About the Author

Mahendra Prasad Singh

Professor (Retired), University of Delhi, New Delhi and now Honorary Senior Fellow, Centre for Multilevel Federalism, Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi.

ELECTIONS AND POLITICAL PARTIES IN INDIA : FEDERALIZATION OF THE POLITY

About the Author

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