The Features of Political Parties in India

In one line

Indian parties are numerous, internally undemocratic, organised as much around leaders, regions and communities as around ideology, dependent on money, and legally able to bind the members they elect.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: the features of political parties in India are a multi-party system with a very large number of registered parties; the coexistence of national and State parties; the prominence of regional, caste and community based parties; the personalisation of leadership and the prevalence of political families; weak internal democracy; ideological convergence with programmatic differences narrower than the rhetoric suggests; heavy dependence on money; and, since 1985, a legal power over their elected members through the Tenth Schedule.

The features

1. A multi-party system, with very many parties

India has a multi-party system in the strict sense: several parties are capable of winning seats and of participating in government. Alongside the recognised national and State parties there are a very large number of registered unrecognised parties, most of which never win anything.

The cause is the country's size and diversity together with a first past the post system that nonetheless rewards parties with geographically concentrated support, which regional and community parties have.

2. National and State parties

A structural feature written into the law. Recognition under the Election Symbols Order distinguishes national parties, State parties and registered unrecognised parties, by reference to seats won and vote share. The distinction is not merely descriptive: it determines the reserved symbol, broadcasting time and the number of star campaigners, and therefore affects who can compete.

3. Regional, caste and community parties

Regional parties have governed States for decades and have repeatedly held the balance in coalitions at the Union.

Caste and community based parties organise around a group's political mobilisation, which chapter 850 treats as one of the older challenges to Indian democracy and which is also, on another reading, a form of representation the older parties denied.

State the fact and both readings. A party organised around a community is a party whose appeal is sectional, which chapter 770 says a party cannot afford; and it is also how groups excluded from power for generations obtained it. Both are true.

4. Personalisation and political families

Many Indian parties are identified with a founder or a leader, and in several the leadership has passed within a family. This is a feature of parties across the spectrum and not of any one of them.

Why it matters. A party organised around a person has no mechanism for changing its leadership except the person's departure, which is Michels's oligarchy at chapter 100 in an Indian form.

5. Weak internal democracy

Internal elections are rare, and where they are held they are often uncontested. Candidates for public office are usually selected by a central committee or a leader rather than by the members in the constituency. There is no legal requirement of internal democracy beyond the requirements of registration.