Elections without Party System Author(s): Rajni Kothari Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 31, No.

16/17 (Apr. 20-27, 1996), pp. 1004-1006 Published by: Economic and Political Weekly Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4404052 . Accessed: 13/01/2011 22:08
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PERSPECTIVES

Electionswithout Party System

Rajni Kothari

dissolved as institutions,this poses a major challenge for both the post-Congresspolity and the post-1996 parliamentarysystem, and above all for the voters who have to make their choices in the next few days.

In many ways 1996 will provide a different kind of political watershed COLLAPSE CONSENSUS OF the fromn ones so far. The point often made by commentatorsthat there are nioissues in the coining election misses the point that the The recent epidemic of factionalism (so election is likely to begin a process of restructuring the very nature different from the factions through which anid composition of the polity - not just an alternative party system the Congress systemii operateci long) had tor
bult an alterntative to the prevailing party system and the political system based oni it.
debatein the countryseems to POLITICAL have got hung on the idea of a 'hung parliament'and the comlingera of coalition at governmiient the centre that it that will necessitate.To me this appearsto be a highly oversimplifiedreadingof thesituationwhich does not tell us much about the real shifts. thatare likely to informthe political system in the coming years, startingwith the 1986 election. It overlooks the specific condition in which the Indian polity finds itself in generaland the peculiarlyspecific situation obtainingbeforethe 1996election in respect of the political, socio-economic and moral dimensions of the polity which has led to a virtualcollapse of both the party system and the political system of which, for close to half a century, it provided the operating dynamic.The collapse' thatI have in mind here is notjust of the Congress as the ruling party at the centre and until not long ago in a majorityof the states but ratherof the entire partysystem that I had more than 30 years ago characterised as the 'Congress is system'. The so-called 'hung parliamenlt' not just a matterof no single party getting a majoritybut ratherof no party or a clear alliance ol parties being in a position to govern. A systenm that hinged so much on a functioning and in many ways unique party system is suddenly being rendered impotent with the collapse of that party system and the considerable national consensusthatit had for so long represented (certainly for the first 20 to 25 years after independencebut even after that when the Congresscontinued,whetherin government or in opposition, to be the key player and setting the tone for the overall functioning of the system). More serious than the collapse ot the Congressas thedominant partyaround which both the party system and the functioning of thegoverningapparatus a whole veered as is the fact that it is itself facing a collapse internallyas a result of being split into so many fragments, a veritable breakdown which had not bet-nenvisaged even a 1ew months ago. Sonmething too dissimilar not seems to be h',ppening to the other main contenders in the coming election though none as serious as is the case withl the Congress which is no longer a house that is somehow held together because no Congressmanwould leave it for fear of not being re-elected or one in wilich the higi command(or the leader)was empoweredto engineer a 'consensus'. Both the Congress and other main contenders in the 1996 electionaretryingto ropein as manyregional and local parties and power groups antd social segments as possible even if this then leads to all kinds of skirmishes within the presumed alignments,whetherbrought about now in the intensecompetitionforprocuring the largestnumberof seats in the Lok Sablia or, even more to the point, afterthe election through horse-trading between and marketisationof members of parliament. 1996 is likely to see not only the end of stabilityin governanceprovidedby a ruling partyorcoalitionbutalso a growingblurring ot boundariesbetween parties,of the voter not knowing whetherthe partyhe is voting for will not, after the election, join up with the party he is voting against. All of this reinforces the basic point made above, namely the growing irrelevanceof partyas an institutionand of the partysystemll the as operating structure through which governance was carried on. Alongside the factthatpartiesthemselvesarebehavinglcss and less as parties with a clear idenltity, disciplineandsense of loyalty andarein fact destroyingthemselvesfromwithin,breaking and upintoso manysplinters virtuallygetting as well as a rising incidence of rivalries between individual wielders of power and growing divisions within and between communities and castes at the groundlevel are all in a way symptomaticof the collapse of the national consensus that obtained at one time and no alternative frameworkof consensus emergingY its place. Thlis is in likely to hit not just the tradlitionlal party bosses that used to run the systemiibv mediating in conflicts at intermiediate and
lower levels so that the status quo could

continue to prevail but also the radical democrats and left-wing forces who were gettinigprepared,only a little while ago, to a new aliglinenit of forces at the grassroots and on that basis 'mobilise people's power' (a termthateven the presidentof Indiaused in his speech on1 eve of the RepublicDay the this year) towardsa new political alignmenit consistingioftboth parties socialsegmeints. and the Unfortunately leadersof suclhgrassroots politics seem to be indulging in the saLme tactics of tryint, to expand by including
whoever is willing to comlie in anldthen face

splits and skirmishesand in the process lose whatever gains (someof themLquite dra;matic) that they had procured over the last few of years. 01' course, as the f'ulcruml politics movesdownwardsin responseto thegrowing awakening among the mass of people, one is likely to witness the growthof a new genre of parties and alignments, maniyof' these focusing on individual leaders wlhoare able to identify with specit'ic castes and communities and ther-ebyproduce a more lasting set of commitmenits than is possible under the fast eroding party system as it obtains today under the neo-liberal, marketisedconception of both the state and the economy, bothlproducingan escalating epidemic of scams and scandals (not infrequently helped by externlal f'orces. ranging from transnationalcorporationsto theemergingregimeo 'tradeandtechnology to which the country seenms to have succumbed)'.

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and jats and kurmis, not to speak of the lingayatsandthe Marathas, confederated the kshatriyas and, above all, the dalits on the one hand and the Muslims on the other. There are also the major tribes, especially in a state like Madhya Pradesh. Various movements against large dams and thermal plants and a growing sense of both ecological and cultural identities have broughtinto being the tribals' demands for autonomy. The dalits in UP (bolstered by an all India dalit consciousness) are keen to carveout theirown politics. The dilemma of people like Mulayam Singh Yadav is how to deal with the traditional animus between the yadavs and other backward castes and the dalits; hence his effort to woo first Kanshi Ram and then Ram Vilas Paswan. In the meanwhile, the kurmis and diverse factions of the BSPare each seeking theirdiverse political destinies. The attempt to federatethe diverse marginalisedgroups including the minorities and the failure to do so has exposed the naivety of the whole vision. Yet the efforts are still on, V P Singh playing a major role in them, in creating a coalitionof socialjustice. Despiteimmediate t'ailures longer-term the is perspective gaining ground.And then,of course, beyond all this andseekingto overcomethenegativeaspects of civil society's alienation from the state are the great upsurges of a radical and idealistic type - the non-party political Nrw BRAND OF POLITICS process,thenaxalitemovement,themilitants strugglingforregionalautonomy,thegrowth in Threethingshavebeenhappening recent of 'identitypolitics', the new tradeunionism times. The expectations that parties and of the Chhattisgarh variety, the Federal governing structureswill serve the interest Front, the many intellectual currents of of civil society has been gradually nelied; dissent andcriticism,the macro-democratic of as the stato has become both too omnipotent consolidations these microupsurges,from and to(; repressiveof the social oraer. it has Lokayan to PUCL/PUDR/APCLC to Second. a new Independent Initiative and, of course, the ceased to he 'representative'. allianiceshas emerged growingappealof Ambedkar his legacy. and genre of parties zanid thathaslittleto do withi representative politics Taking both the negative and the positive ot the traditionaltypc llat was associated aspects together, the country seems set on modelof parliamentary a brand of politics that goes beyond the withtheWestninlster framework of'thestate,theparties democracy. Tlird. there is a growing fear traditional of the people aind of increasing militancy and governments. With the collapse of the Congress system amongthileill()1lowing failureof the state the to fultiltheir-demands aspirationswhich anidthe national consensus it represented, and has in tuirn placed(far too great a stress on the growing erosion of institutional considerationsoi security of the elite and structuresof a parlianmentary democracy in its increaisingtl distancing trom the people. consequence of the same and the sharp All ol this - aindlmany other factors, decline in people's f'aithin these, a new the particularly increasingresortby parties brandof'politics is on the upswing in which andthe nationalcentreto split andsegregate the citizen-voters, the individualcandidates communities- has led to each majorsocial rather than nominees of a party and segment evolving its own politics and its representativesof civil society will play an of own meians protectionand security. Most increasing role. With this, it may also important these have been the largercaste become possible to use the decentralised of groupings like the yadavs system of governance and the affirmative. andlcommnunity lies Tlhc main confLisioon in not seeing clearly that ias the various constituents of mainly in local and civil society. op)crating regional spaces, begin to challenge the trainework of a cenitralised and now increasingly globalising state, something quiteditferenttrom a new set of partiesand politicalaligninentsis called for. Alreadyas the national parties (not excluding the Congress and the BJP) are getting increasinglyregionalisedwe arelikely to get a large number of small parties for new 'coalitiiois', we are likely to witness a political processin which specific social groups may throughtraditionalparties entcrpairliament butthen asserttheiridentities in parliament which are more socially political than political in the statist sense of the term.The cirsis in wihichthe centralised nation state like finds itself in a ".:ountry India that is stirring with a iarge variety of upsurges the fromi bottom of society is one in which the state' as an organised structure of governance from above may recede and get replacedby both old and new identities and structurescloser to the ground, fragmented in parts no doubt but together producing a political process of a kind that will be diflferent tfromin one that has been the provided for so lon- by a partysystem that had centralised hoth power and privilege and marginalised both regions and social groups.

model of social justice that have been put in place by legislative and constitutional measuresin a much moreeffective way than was in fact intendedby those who introduced these changes in the bodypolitic(panchayati raj,mandal,reservationsfor women in local bodies, now being advocated for state and central levels as well) and produce approximations towards a more 'direct' model of democracy. Will such a model reinforce the role of caste and produce a political process that is aroundcaste loyalties (and castestructured based mafias)? In point of fact castes and communities have all long been major variables in the operation of the Congress system, in its negotiating framework at regional, local and grassrootslevels and. as time went on, with local mafias and theit musclemen. The Congress had all lon. maintainedits dominanceby being in league with dominantcastes and the landedgeni y who in turnwere able to 'deliver' the vols of castes and classes which fell underthcir purview of influence and domination. And the same applied to gangs and gangsters in the urbanareaswho too were in a position to deliver the votes to the bosses who controlled the Congress party in the uihan areas. The only difference was that so l.ng as the party organisation and its boss structure ran the system, both kinds of mafias (rural and urban) were more at the beck and call of the former whereas today, with the eclipse of party organisation and gradual erosion of the role of the state, the terms of the bargaining framework have shifted in favour of the latter. This has raised the threshold of both corruptionand criminalisationandof communalandcastebased politics beyond the traditional role playedby the same factqrsearlier.following in the mainthe erosion of boththe sovereign and self-reliant nature of the state and the political organisation of the same through an identifiable and legitimate partysystem. But of course new factors too are playing a role following the correspondingerosion of the broad-based social coalition underprinning the party system. (This

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included the dalits. the Muslims, a large and section of the backwards in more recent the timiies tribalsas well. All of these arenow slippinglout of the larger and composite socialcoalitionthatprovidedto theCongress its all-Indiacharacterwhich reachedout to all butthe very poorstrataof society.) Much ol this is now prettymuch destroyed and as the alicnated and oppressed sections are status againstthetraditional gettingorgainised quo. not just thc Conigress but the party system ot which it had been the centrepiece are in decline and thc country has entered instability.Institutional a periodof endemnic instability informs large partsof the world

society as well as the relationshipbetween the economy and the polity in large parts of the world. Bothglobalisationandthe neoliberal ideology that seeks to provide its dynamic motorltorceare destabilising the nation-statein large partsof the world and, with it, the partysystem that had provided the institutional inlrastructure to it. Till recently India looked like providing an exception to this worldwidedrilt. But 1996 onwards it could well be the worst case of
them all.
BEYOND PARTYSYSTEM

To sum it all, we may well be moving today. Party systems in particular are in everywhere. The Ross Perot into an era, starting with 1996 but getting crisis almnost in phenoniewlon the US (aiswell as the new under way atter the election, in which the faceot Repuiblicainismil),crisis in Canada, elections will depend less and less on way in Turkey, the fast parties, will be held under conditions in the erosions untder changes taking place in most of eastern which the nation-building project is in Europe.the crisis of 'onc partysystems' that jeopardy underthe shadow ol a neo-liberal, had once provided thc kernel of radical marketised, world order, resulting in a politics In largepartsof Africa, not to speak schizophrenic syndrome in which parties of the changes found in our own vying with each other for a few seats this (Bangladesh,Sri Lanka),all way or other and in which the people will neighbourlhood be looking outside and beyond parties in of which underscore the changing relationship between the state and civil deciding their own preferences. All this

will take time, for the people at large, especially in rural areas and particularly the deprived sections thereof, still have a lot of faith in politics and in elections and parties as necessary vehicles thereof. But as they face a growing situation of both being taken for granted and being continuously divided and exploited, they too are likely to look for their own instrumentsforexpressing theirpreferences and commitments. In many ways then 1996 will provide a different kind of watershed that the ones provided so far. The point often made by commentators that there are no issues in the forthcomingelections misses the whole point that the election is likely to begin a process of restructuring the very nature and composition of the polity, of course, aftera period chaos and destahilisationand possibly one or two more elections during which the various citizen initiatives that have already begun during 1996 will get better organised and provide a basis for a new alternative. Not just an alternative to party system but perhaps an alterniative the prevailing model of a party systein and the political system based thereon.

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