POLITICAL PARTY TRENDS: CENTRALIZED STYLE.

ESSAY FODDER—the hindu

TRENDS OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN INDIA: CENTRALIZED STYLE.

The first — why do political parties in India have a tendency to centralise? And the second — why do leaders of these parties project themselves as “supremo,” or the ultimate authority?

Both dynastic and non-dynastic parties follow centralisation of authority.

In our opinion, India’s political parties and their leaders have the propensity to centralise authority because most political parties do not have independent organisational bases, a large section of citizens depend upon India’s mai-baap state [nanny state] for their general well-being, and the nature of financing election campaigns in the country.

If a party has a strong organisation and allows other contenders an equal opportunity to reach to the top, then factional politics within the party would create independent bases of power and incentivise lobbying. This is true in the case of the BJP and the Left parties as they are rooted in strong civil society organisations. For example, in case of the BJP, the RSS and its affiliates act as a strong check on party leadership.

The AAP has severed its ties from the Anna Hazare-led anti-corruption movement in the wake of its party formation. It now lacks an independent organisational base that could check the leader becoming the party — a phenomenon common to most political parties in India.

Political parties in India have an incentive to centralise party organisation because the Indian state is the mai-baap. In a mai-baap state, the state is involved in everyday economic activity of most citizens — from running railways and building big industrial complexes to social sector programmes like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), mid-day meals, etc. The state is the primary investor, creator and provider of most goods that citizens consume. The control over the state and its institutions help in crystallising the support base of a politician.

This centralisation is also helped by the opaque campaign finance regime of parties in India, which is closely tied to the mai-baap state and its institutions. Campaign finance in India is often undisclosed, collected centrally, and distributed by the central party office. While the central leadership handles the bulk of the campaign spending, political parties also allocate tickets to candidates with a substantial amount of wealth and a criminal background so they could finance their own elections. 

The tendency of party centralisation also explains why India has such a high rate of party fragmentation — more and more parties competing in the next election — and electoral volatility — the net change in the vote share of a party from one election to the next. When one leader frequently makes the decisions regarding appointments to positions of power within a party, then others within the party become unsure of their career paths. Ambitious politicians in such a scenario are likely to desert their parent party and join another party to enhance career prospects.

In this way, party centralisation leads to more and more parties entering the electoral market place and greater vote swings between two elections.

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