Sunday, August 17, 2003		Books

Federalisation of Indian politics
Ashutosh Kumar

Political Parties and Party Systems
edited by Ajay K. Mehra, D.D. Khanna and Gert W. Kueck. Sage Publications New Delhi. Pages 420. Rs 850.

THE book draws our attention to two notable developments in the nature of the party system and the polity in India in the past two decades. First, there has been a dramatic change in the social composition of voters and active participants in politics — 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 federalisation at the national, state and local levels. Among the related developments one can refer to the 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 centralised polity".

Among the above developments the essays in the edited volume primarily focus on the federalisation 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 federalising party system in India? Mehra in his paper refers to them as follows: organisational and ideological decline of the Congress, introduction of conflict mode of politics, national parties resembling each other 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 ultra-rightist resurgent Hindutva forces. The last one, the rise and fall of the third front, comes up for critical examination in the papers of Bidyut Chakrabarty and Muchkund Dubey.

While referring to the decline of the third front and the emergence of the BJP in the recent years Balveer Arora argues that the emergent ‘bi-nodal’ party system is acquiring a highly competitive nature mainly due to the democratisation as well as fragmentation of voters and political parties. He supports his arguments with reference to the official data of the 1996, 1998, and 1999 Lok Sabha elections.

In another empirical study of the nine Hindi-speaking states, Partha Ghose traces the emergence of the ‘bi-nodal’ party system to the fact that the Congress, decaying in terms of its organisation as well as leadership and also facing a challenge from a resurgent Hindu nationalist Jana Sangh, 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, the successor of the Jana Sangh.

In a national election survey data-based study sponsored by the CSDS, New Delhi, of the three elections mentioned above, Amit Prakash has attributed the decline of the Congress and the emergence of the BJP to "a greater voter preference for regionally based socio-culturally located parties with mobilisation 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 regionalisation of the Indian party system late Pradeep Kumar refers to the misleading nature of the often-emphasised dichotomy between the national and the 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 regionalisation/federalisation 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 for the working of the procedural form of democracy, Madhav Godbole suggests the incorporation of "a proper constitutional and legislative framework" for the ever-increasing number of political parties in the face of the rising distortions both in the electoral framework and the organisational framework of the parties. 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 civilised social ethos.

The edited volume, consisting of original articles especially written for the volume, is welcome as academic writings illustrating the effects of social and electoral change upon the nature of parties and party systems in the post-Congress Indian polity are not easily available. It goes without saying that political parties, unlike in the West, remain very much central to Indian political life. On a personal note the volume is dedicated to late Prof Pradeep Kumar, a colleague at Panjab University who, to recall Paul Baran, was an intellectual in true sense and not merely an intellect worker that most of us in the university systems are.