State and Society in India

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ERASMUS STUDENT                                       State and Society in India 

POLSIS                                                                                  0813499A-POLS 215D

0503599                                                                                    

Does INDIA HAVE A MULTI-PARTY              DEMOCRACY ?

Does India have a multi-party    democracy ?

  India is known for being by far the largest democracy in the world, with almost 600 million voters. India’s democratic political system is a legacy of British colonialism (for instance their parliamentary government, or the First Past the Post electoral system), which ended in 1947. The British introduced self-government to India in stages, but it was not until the end of colonial rule and the adoption of the Indian Constitution in 1950 by a Constituent Assembly that universal suffrage was achieved. Despite this democratic basis, India’s political life is also said to have been dominated for more than 50 years by nearly one party, the Congress, a party which was founded in December 1885, and was the first effective all-India political organisation. A question thus arises, about India having an effective multi-party democracy (a system of government by the whole population, with more than three political parties) . We will see in a first part that the Congress party has played a major role in Indian politics, and still does today, however, in a second part, we will analyse the elements which transformed this one-party system to an increasingly fragmented and unstable multi-party system.

  But let us begin with the examination of the predominant role of the Congress in India party-system.

  One of the factors that enabled such a dominant position is the use of the First Past the Post system of voting, in which victory goes to the candidate who gets the most votes. This system can result in a vast representational gap between an electorally strong but highly fragmented opposition of parties and the ability of a large, nationally organised party or coalition of parties to gain a sizeable legislative majority with only a plurality of the votes. This system of voting was chosen mainly to avoid fragmented legislatures and to help the formation of stable governments ( stability being a major consideration in a developing country with widespread poverty and illiteracy ). The First Past the Post electoral system resulted in the ruling Congress party securing stable majorities in the Lok Sabha (the lower house), usually against a fragmented opposition, at least until 1977.

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  Moreover, the Congress party could occupy a prominent position in the political arena, as it was able gather the opposition within itself. According to Khotari, between 1947 and 1967, India’s party system was characterised by “dominance coexisting with competition but without a trace of alternation”, that is to say that opposition had little hope of preventing the Congress from obtaining sizeable majorities in the legislature, as a consequence, they had to content themselves with being only parties of pressure: instead of providing a real alternative to the Congress party, they functioned by influencing sections within the Congress. It ...

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