Parties And The Party Systems In India | Chapter 10 Notes 2024

Last updated on July 14th, 2024 at 05:59 pm

Parties And The Party Systems In India

The Indian political system works within the framework of the country’s Constitution. India is a parliamentary Democratic Republic in which the President of India is the head of state and the Prime Minister of India is the head of government. It is based on the federal structure of government.

Congress System

The Indian National Congress, often called the Congress Party, is a political party in India founded in 1885, it was the first nationalist movement to emerge in the British Empire in Asia and Africa.

After 1920, under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, Congress became the principal leader of the Indian independence movement.

Congress party led India to independence from the United Kingdom, and powerfully influenced other anti-colonial nationalist movements in the British Empire, it is one of the world’s oldest active political parties.

Congress is one of the two major political parties in India, along with its rival the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Congress social policy is based upon the Gandhian principle of Sarvodaya (the lifting up of all sections of society) which involves the improvement of the lives of economically underprivileged and socially marginalised people.

On social issues, it support secular policies that encourage equal opportunities to all, right to health, civil liberty and welfare of weaker sections and minorities, with support for a mixed economy.

After the independence in 1947, Congress formed the union government of India and many state governments of India.

Congress became India’s dominant political party till 2014, it has won a majority in general elections on seven occasions and has led the coalition three times, heading the central government for more than 54 years. 

There have been six Congress Prime Ministers, the first being Jawaharlal Nehru (1947–1964), and the most recent Manmohan Singh (2004–2014). 

Although it did not pergorm well in the last two general elections in India in 2014 and 2019.

In the 2014 general election, Congress had its poorest post-independence general election performance, winning only 44 seats out of the 543-member Lok Sabha.

From 2004 to 2014, United Progressive Alliance (a coalition of Congress with several regional parties) formed the Indian government led by Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister as the head of the coalition government. 

Sonia Gandhi as the leader of the party during the period, has served the longest term as the president of the party. 

Bi-party System

India is a vast and diversified country through their cultures, religion, language, etc. From the time of independence, there was INC (Indian National Congress) as a political party which kept hold of Indian political system and since then many parties came into existence and played an important role in our political system.

A Bi-party system is a political party system in which two major political parties consistently dominate the political landscape. 

One of the two parties holds a majority in the legislature while the other is the minority or opposition party.

The two-party system is said to promote governmental stability because a single party can win a majority in the parliament and govern. 

In a multiparty country, the formation of a government depends on the maintenance of a coalition of parties with enough total strength to form a parliamentary majority. 

The weakness of the ties that bind the coalition may threaten the continuance of a cabinet in power. 

The two party system moderates political ideology and protects the majority from the minority. 

It protects the nation from confusion. Rapid reforms of government that either result in an inefficient government because there is little time to realize if the reforms are positive or negative. 

Thus, a bi-party system always gives benefit in a logical development where both parties have broad-based support and are moderate in their approach towards sustainable development through all over india.

Advantages of Bi-Party System 

• It helps the country to move forward with diverse ideas – It helps in resolving complex policies.
• It helps individuals to provide their viewpoint about the country and help in their whole development.
• It allows the parties to have healthy discussions and it will allow the system to rethink the overall strategy being used by the individuals in the party and the party as a whole.
• It helps in resolving the issues that are being faced by the country and the people who are residing in it. 
• It allows equal chances to be given to all the members who are participating and allows them to gain power.
• It allows participants to easily govern and leave many choices for them to gain freedom.
• It also encourages political stability that is very hard to find in multi-system 
• It provides simple voting processes to be followed that helps in finishing up the polls at a lesser time without creating complex processes.
• This system will also help in lowering down the corruption of the country as only one party will be working towards achieving the goals.

Disadvantages of Bi-party System

• The whole system depends on the number of representatives that are getting elected. This system restricts the voter’s choice to vote as the vote will go to a party rather than individuals.
• The Bi-party system won’t allow the people to choose the correct participants as they need to choose only the party out of the two parties.
• The political parties represented in the election do not matter much but it is the quality of the representative that matters that are getting elected.
• This system only increases the ambiguity of the candidates participating in the elections or involved in any party, as this setup doesn’t ensure a quality group of individuals.

Multi-Party Coalition System

A multi-party system is a political system in which many political parties compete for power and the government will often pass between coalitions formed by different combinations of parties

All have the capacity to gain control of government offices, separately or in coalition.

Apart from one-party-dominant and two-party systems, multi-party systems tend to be more common in parliamentary systems than presidential systems.

This level of competition means that it is unlikely that one party will control the country’s legislature, which forces the creation of a coalition.

This system is common in countries that use proportional representation compared to countries that use first-past-the-post elections. 

Multi-party systems are more common in countries that use proportional representation as their election system, than countries that use first past the post elections. It reflect better the range of a population’s views.

Argentina, Armenia, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Indonesia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the Philippines, Poland, Sweden, Tunisia, and Ukraine are examples of nations, who have used a multi-party system effectively in their democracies. 

In these countries, usually no single party has a parliamentary majority. Instead, multiple political parties form coalition governments 

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