PSIR Optional (Paper 1 Section B) (Party System) by R.P.Singh Sir

Model Answer

Question #1. Over the years, the 'Non-Party' institutions have come to play a very crucial role in Indian politics. Comment.

Hints:

•   The concept of political participation has assumed a new significance in the Indian democratic process. The credit goes to the Behaviouralist for espousing this concept as an essential aspect for the democratic process. Various forms of political participation include voting in referendums, membership in political parties and pressure groups, government advisory committees, involvement in the implementation of social policies etc. The proliferation of political parties in an increasingly competitive system also contributed to the widening political participation across various sections of society.
•   There are many non-party institutions that facilitate political participation, such as trade unions, peasant associations and the universities. But many have noted a growing inefficacy on the part of these institutions as agents of political participation and as controlling influences over the political parties. The globalising forces have made the trade unions weak and this in turn reduced their influences on the party organisations. The rise in the number of universities and their falling standards has also limited their influences as participating institutions in civil society.
•   After the 1990s several new actors as NGOs, have emerged as agents of political participation mainly in regard to the implementation of official programmes or sponsored developmental projects.
•   There has however been  rising political participation through 'new social movements'-movements that have arisen as a response to, among other things, the violations of civil liberties and human rights, violence on or gender bias to women , the degradation of environment, destruction of tribal culture or way of life. Some have described these movements as 'counter hegemonic' and noted the following major categories: Women's Movements, Forest Struggles, Anti-Big-dam movements.
•   There have also been increasing cases of identity assertions and 'autonomy movements', some employing violent means, which represent non-party based channels of political participation in contemporary India
•   Social networking sites, blogs, and other online platforms also emerged as major means of political participation.
•   Non-party institutions played a significant role in further deepening of Indian democracy as it increased voter turnout, strengthened institutions of grassroots politics and local level democracy and political assertions of the historically disadvantaged castes and ethno-regional groups.
•   These institutions played active role in generating awareness, mobilizing young and educated class to become part of political process
•   Although impacts of these institutions are limited, still it helped in establishing participatory culture and setting a new democratic agenda of Indian politics.

Question #2. Analyse the various aspects of Social Mobilization by Political Parties in India.

Hints:

• The 'Consociational' and 'Adversarial' characterization of Indian democracy shows that through political party competition, the social cleavages of a deeply divided society gets exposed. This is true even for Congress which appears less of a heterogeneous national party but a coalition of diverse local and state groups based on divisions and conflicts of region and community.  
• The political significance of group conflicts varies from state to state, to the extent there is variation in the strength of the link between social groups and the parties.
• Almost together with the acceptance of the Mandal Commission's recommendations, recent years have witnessed the emergence of the Dalit-Bahujan castes, often trying to encompass the Muslim minority in its fold. The political parties representing these social groups are identified as the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), the Samajwadi Party, and sections of the Janata Dal-a phenomenal increase in caste based parties since the old Justice Party, to the point that social pluralism in India gets increasingly reflected in the competitive party system which serves as the agent of political participation.
• That is to say, a given political party while acting as the agent of political participation often shows internal pluralism in its organisation. In a recent study of Dravidian parties, Narendra Subramanian demonstrates that the internal pluralism of parties, and not simply social pluralism, promotes greater representation and participation of emergent groups, the reconstruction of public culture and tolerance.
• The social nature of the increased voter's turnout has not followed many clear patterns. The turnout among men has always been higher than women but the participation rate has improved faster among women than among men. .Both the number of women contestants and of representatives show a declining trend in parliamentary and assembly elections, though at local level, due to reservations, women's participation has increased. Since the 1980's there has been a proliferation of autonomous women's groups in most parts of the country and this has added a new social dimension to political participation in India.
• Yogendra Yadav, however, notes that one of the characteristics of the new democratic upsurge has been that practically everywhere rural constituencies report a higher turnout. While Muslim turnout in Muslim concentrated constituencies and turnout in reserved (SC) constituencies were not higher than the past, the reserved (ST) constituencies recorded higher than average turnout in Andhra, Gujarat and Maharashtra. So did some backward regions like Vidarbha and Marathwada in Maharashtra, east Delhi and Bundelkhand in UP. The hitherto fringe sections of society are thus now being intensely politicized by emerging regional and sectoral forces.