POLITICAL PARTIES
Why do we need political parties?
Political parties are easily one of the most visible institutions in a
democracy.
For most ordinary citizens, democracy is equal to political parties.
About hundred years ago there were few countries of the world that
had any political party. Now there are few countries that do not have
parties.
A political party is a group of people who come together to contest
elections and hold power in the government. They agree on some
policies and programmes for the society with a view to promote the
collective good.
.
A political party has three components:
1. The Leaders 2. The Active Members 3.The Followers
Functions/ Role of Political Parties:-
1 Parties contest elections. In most democracies, elections are fought mainly
among the candidates put up by political parties.
2 Parties put forward different policies and programmes and the voters
choose from them.
3 Parties play a decisive role in making laws for a country. Formally, laws are
debated and passed in the legislature.
4 Parties form and run governments as the Ruling Parties.
5 Those parties that lose in the elections play the role of opposition to the
parties
in power Opposition parties also mobilise opposition to the government.
6 Parties shape public opinion. Parties sometimes also launch movements for
the resolution of problems faced by people.
7 Parties provide people access to government machinery and welfare
schemes implemented by governments. For an ordinary citizen it is easy to
approach a local party leader than a government officer.
“ We cannot imagine modern democracies without political parties”-
Explain
We can understand the necessity of political parties by imagining a
situation without parties.
Every candidate in the elections will be independent. So no one will be
able to make any promises to the people about any major policy
changes.
The government may be formed, but its utility will remain ever
uncertain.
That is the reason we find political parties in almost all countries of the
world,
whether these countries are big or small, old or new, developed or
developing.
As societies became large and complex, they also needed some
agency to gather different views on various issues and to present
these to the government.
How many parties should we have?/ DIFFERENT PARTY
SYSTEMS
In a democracy any group of citizens is free to form a political party.
More than 750 parties are registered with the Election Commission of
India.
1. THE SINGLE PARTY SYSTEM:-
In some countries, only one party is allowed to control and run the
government.
These are called one-party systems.
In China, only the Communist Party is allowed.
2. THE DUAL PARTY SYSTEM:-
In some countries, power usually changes between two main parties or
two main groups of parties. Such a party system is called two-party
system. The United States of America and the United Kingdom are
examples of two-party system.
3. THE MULTI PARTY SYSTEM:-
If several parties compete for power, and more than two parties have a
reasonable chance of coming to power either on their own strength or
in alliance with others, we call it a multiparty system. Thus in India, we
have a multiparty system. In this system, the government is formed by
various parties coming together in a coalition.
“No Party system is ideal for all countries and all situations”.
Party system is not something any country can choose.
It evolves over a long time, depending on the nature of society, its
social and regional divisions, its history of politics and its system of
elections.
These cannot be changed very quickly.
Each country develops a party system that is conditioned by its special
circumstances.
NATIONAL PARTY REGIONAL PARTY
Parties that are present in several or Parties that are present in only one of
all the federal units/ states.
units/ states of the federation.
By and large, all these units follow These will have local matters.
the same policies, programmes and State parties’ are commonly referred
strategy that is decided at the to as regional parties
national level.
A party that secures at least six per A party that secures at least six per
cent of the total votes in LokSabha cent of the total votes in an election
elections or Assembly elections in to the Legislative Assembly of a State
four States and wins at least four and wins at least two seats is
seats in the LokSabha is recognized recognised as a State party.
as a national party.
EXAMPLE – CONGRESS, BJP, CPI. EXAMPLE- JDS, TDP,DMK,TRS.
Every party in the country has to register with the Election Commission.
While the Commission treats all parties equally, it offers some special
facilities to
large and established parties.
These parties are given a unique symbol – only the official candidates of that
party can
use that election symbol.
Parties that get this privilege and some other special facilities are
‘recognised’ by the Election Commission for this purpose.
NATIONAL PARTIES
According to this classification, there were seven recognised national parties
in the country in 2017.
.PARTY All India Trinamool Congress (AITC)
YEAR OF LAUNCHING 1998
FOUNDER Mamata Banerjee
SYMBOL Flowers and Grass
IDEALS Committed to secularism and federalism.
PRESENT IN West Bengal, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and
Tripura
PARTY BahujanSamaj Party (BSP)
YEAR OF LAUNCHING 1984
FOUNDER Kanshi Ram
SYMBOL ELEPHANT
IDEALS Seeks to represent and secure power for the
bahujan samaj which includes the dalits, adivasis,
OBCs and religious
minorities.
Draws inspiration from the ideas and teachings of
Sahu Maharaj, Mahatma Phule, Periyar Ramaswami
Naicker and Babasaheb Ambedkar.
Stands for the cause of securing the interests and
welfare of the dalits and oppressed people.
PRESENT IN Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh,Delhi,
Uttarakhand and Punjab
PARTY BharatiyaJanata Party(BJP)
YEAR OF LAUNCHING 1980
FOUNDER Born out of Bharatiya Jana Sangh,formed by Syama
Prasad Mukherjee in 1951.
SYMBOL Lotus
IDEALS Wants to build a strong and modern India by
drawing
inspiration from India’s ancient culture and values;
and Deendayal Upadhyaya’s ideas of integral
humanism and
Antyodaya.
Cultural nationalism (or ‘Hindutva’) is an
important element in its conception of Indian
nationhood and politics.
Wants full territorial and political integration of
Jammu and Kashmir with India, a uniform civil
code for all people living in the country
irrespective of religion, and ban on religious
conversions.
PRESENT IN All parts of the country
PARTY Communist Party of India (CPI)
YEAR OF LAUNCHING 1925
FOUNDER M.N.ROY
SYMBOL .
IDEALS Believes in Marxism-Leninism, secularism and
democracy.
Opposed to the forces of secessionism and
communalism.
Accepts parliamentary democracy as a means
of promoting the interests of the working
class, farmers and the poor.
PRESENT IN Kerala, West Bengal, Punjab, Andhra and Tamil
Nadu.
PARTY Communist Party of India (CPI) - Marxist (CPI-M)
YEAR OF LAUNCHING 1964
FOUNDER
SYMBOL .
IDEALS Believes in Marxism- Leninism.
Supports socialism, secularism and democracy
and opposes imperialism and communalism.
Accepts democratic elections as a useful and
helpful means for securing the objective of
socioeconomic
justice in India.
PRESENT IN West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura
PARTY Indian National Congress(INC)
YEAR OF LAUNCHING 1885
FOUNDER A O HUME
SYMBOL
IDEALS A centrist party (neither rightist nor leftist) in
its
ideological orientation,
The party espouses secularism and welfare of
weaker sections and minorities.
Supports new economic reforms but with a
human
Face.
PRESENT IN All parts of the country
.
PARTY Nationalist Congress Party(NCP
YEAR OF LAUNCHING 1999
FOUNDER SARAD POWAR, P A SANGMA
SYMBOL CLOCK
IDEALS Espouses democracy, Gandhian secularism,
equity,
social justice and federalism.
Wants that high offices in government be
confined
to natural born citizens of the country.
PRESENT IN Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Manipur and Assam.
Challenges to political parties
1. Lack of internal democracy
The first challenge is lack of internal democracy within parties. Allover
the world there is a tendency in political parties towards the
concentration of power in one or few leaders at the top.
Parties do not keep membership registers, do not hold organisational
meetings, and do not conduct internal elections regularly.
Ordinary members of the party do not get sufficient information on
what happens inside the party.
2. Challenge of dynastic succession:-
The second challenge of dynastic succession is related to the first one.
Since
most political parties do not practice open and transparent procedures
for their functioning, there are very few ways for an ordinary worker to
rise to the top
in a party.
In many parties, the top positions are always controlled by members of
one family.
3. The growing role of money and muscle power in parties:-
The third challenge is about the growing role of money and muscle
power in parties, especially during elections.
Since parties are focused only on winning elections, they tend to use
short-cuts to win elections. They tend to nominate those candidates
who have or can raise lots of money.
Rich people and Companies who give funds to the parties tend to have
influence on the policies and decisions of the party.
In some cases, parties support criminals who can win elections.
Democrats all over the world are worried about the increasing role of
rich people and big companies in democratic politics.
4. The fourth challenge is that very often parties do not seem to offer a
meaningful choice to the voters.
In recent years there has been a decline in the ideological differences
among parties in most parts of the world.
Sometimes people cannot even elect very different leaders either,
because the same set of leaders keep shifting parties.
WAYS OF REFORMING THE POLITICAL PARTIES:-
In order to face these challenges, political parties need to be reformed.
Let us look at some of the recent efforts and suggestions in our country
to reform political parties and its leaders:
THE STEPS THAT ARE ALREADY TAKEN
1. The Constitution was amended to prevent elected MLAs and MPs from
changing parties. This was done because many elected representatives
were indulging in DEFECTION in order to become ministers or for cash
rewards.
Now the law says that if any MLA or MP changes parties, he or she will
lose the seat in the legislature. This new law has helped bring
defection down.
2. The Supreme Court passed an order to reduce the influence of money
and criminals. Now, it is mandatory for every candidate who contests
elections to file an AFFIDAVIT giving details of his property and criminal
cases pending against him/her.
3. The Election Commission passed an order making it necessary for
political parties to hold their organizational elections and file their
income tax returns.
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SOME SUGGESTIONS to reform political parties:-
1. A law should be made to regulate the internal affairs of political
parties.
It should be made compulsory for political parties to maintain a
register of its members, to follow its own constitution, to have an
independent authority, to act as a judge in case of party disputes, to
hold open elections to the highest posts.
2. It should be made mandatory for political parties to give a minimum
number of tickets, about one-third, to women candidates. Similarly,
there should be a quota for women in the decision making bodies of
the party.
3. There should be state funding of elections. The government should
give parties money to support their election expenses. This support
could be given in kind: petrol, paper, telephone etc. Or it could be
given in cash on the basis of
the votes secured by the party in the last election.
These suggestions have not yet been accepted by political parties.
Political parties will not agree to pass a law that they do not like.
OTHER TWO BEST METHODS TO REFORM POLITICAL PARTIES:-
There are two other ways in which political parties can be reformed.
One, people can put pressure on political parties. This can be done
through
petitions, publicity and agitations.
Two, political parties can improve if those who want this join political
parties.
The quality of democracy depends on the degree of public
participation.
