Multi-party systems are far more common in countries that use proportional representation as their election system than countries that use first past the post elections. It tends to reflect better the range of a population’s views.The UK has been edging towards a multi-party system in the past few years. The use of proportional representation in elections other than Westminster means the electorate have got used to voting for smaller parties, which helps explain why they make up 33% of the vote even for the Westminster General election.UKIP achieved 124 second places in the 2015 election, and the SNP won 56 seats. Anyone who could mobilise the 33% of the population who didn’t vote could actually win. Some now argue that the voting system should change to reflect this move to multi-party politics.A multiparty system is one where multiple political parties exist and have a chance of leading the government. This is different from the United States where there are two political parties that dominate the political field. These are the Republican and Democratic political parties. Examples of countries that have a multiparty political system are Canada, which has six political parties, and Mexico, which has seven political parties.There are some common features that generally exist in countries with a multiparty political system. Generally, there is a parliamentary system and representation is proportional. The party that gets the largest share of the votes wins the election. Countries with a multiparty political system tend to have greater voter participation in elections because people can usually identify with at least one political party that shares their views and goals. Some people feel the United States would be better served with a multiparty system. However, it might be even more difficult to reach agreement on issues if multiple parties existed. Multi–party system. A multi–party system is a system where multiple political parties take part in national elections. … There is no limit to the number of parties that can take part in a British election, but the government must command a majority in the House of Commons, and is usually formed from one party.

In the Indian context there is the special history of a party system having evolved as a part of the freedom movement against the British. That is the reason why the Congress party emerged from the struggle for freedom as the dominant party at the time of independence. Since then over the half a century and more the scene has gradually changed and today the scene has changed so much it would have been probably impossible to imagine for anybody in 1947 that some day there would be so many parties in India competing for power.

In the initial years after independence the need for voting by every citizen as a democratic exercise itself was not understood by the vast majority of our people. The reason was the socio-economic condition of the vast majority of our people. The vast majority of our population were very poor and uneducated. Many people lived under exploitative economic situations like for instance under the rule of feudal and powerful zamindars in villages. They had to do what their economic masters told them. Many of these economic masters were also local leaders of political parties and could use coercion and social influence to force people living under them to go to vote for them so that they may get elected. Therefore many people voted in elections to please their masters rather han out of a sense of democratic awareness or duty. In fact the choice too was limited in many places with only the Congress Party under Nehru’s leadership as the only serious contender.

That is the reason it was quite easy for even the ruling party to encourage opponents and there would be lively debates in parliament with parties having very little strength even engaging in them which was intended to develop a democratic culture. The hostility and shouting matches that is often seen today is the exact opposite of how the party system had started in India. In fact in many ways parties particularly the Congress Party was relieved at the presence of an opposition in marked contrast to today where parties wish to see their opponents destroyed and some criminal politicians even go to the extent of literally organising that.

Scholars on the Indian party system have classified various stages of growth of the Indian party system as follows: (a) 1952-64 (The Nehruvian era of national consensus and parliamentary electoral democracy taking its first steps.), (b) 1964-69 (An uneasy transition accompanied by the emergence of a multi-party situation.), (c) 1969-75 (A period of a new consensus and increasing inter-party conflict), (d) 1975-77 (The period of Emergency and Indira Gandhi’s authoritarian rule), (e) 1980-89 (The phase of tussle between the Congress at the centre and the newly emerged regional parties at the state level), (f) 1989 to the present (The emergence of an established multi-party system and coalition politics.)

It is important to remember that it is important not just to look at the number of parties while studying the growth of the party system but also the ideological variation, geographical spread, social support bases and the stands that the parties took on various issues and in the programs that they offered support for.

Broadly speaking before we move forward it is necessary to remember that India had had three kinds of partiesideologically – the Right Wing parties interested in moving India away from socialism and towards free market capitalism combined with social conservatism in some cases (like the BJP and the erstwhile Swatantra Party) to Left Wing parties that wished to principally rely on socialist construction for the nation’s development with an interventionist actively developmental state (like the CPI and the CPI(M)) to Centrist parties that wanted to have policies that was a mix and match of the left and right as per the situation but was essentially against the extreme leftist position of true socialism or communism (like the Congress Party that has moved from Nehruvian ideas of Indian Socialism and a Welfare State to the somewhat polar opposite – the market-led essentially Capitalist policy prescriptions of the present leadership).                       

The Congress System 

In the first decades after independence essentially for its historical legacy position, the Congress Party was the dominant party and Indian democracy was essentially a one party dominant or monopoly situation. It is not that India did not have other political forces or parties at all but they mostly represented people from one religious community or caste or creed or economic class or vested interest[1]. But it was the Congress that evolved as the party that was like a big umbrella under which all communities and interests and ideologies sought and got a place to have their say and their interests taken into consideration. The fact that the Congress formally again and again re-affirmed its commitment to equality, social and political, and democracy and secularism helped in it evolving from a broad–based nation movement for freedom from the British colonial masters to the dominant political party of the nation post independence. Indeed it did not even have to try. It was the inheritor of the circumstances that came to be and that it had helped bring about.

The Congress had a system where there were various strands, factions, groups and leaders of influence within the party all of whom represented different social and regional interests and the party acted to work out a consensus between them and govern the nation smoothly. There were many small parties competing with the Congress but they acted mainly as kind of pressure groups in influencing Congress polices via public and parliamentary debates and criticisms. Indeed many of these parties that won a small fraction of the national vote but together were more than the Congress eventually all came into existence when the particular agenda or interest that they represented was overlooked in national policy making. The Congress Party actively all the time sought to resolve or avoid conflict, balance interests, and blur ideological distinctions in its search for consensus. Also it accommodated and absorbed many dominant social elements interestingly post independence that were not its supporter during the freedom movement. For instance many traditional feudal castes, landlords, village leaders and businessmen and industrialists who were never enthusiastic with the Congress during freedom movement or were opposed to it became part of the Congress support base and the Congress system after independence.

Thus elections were held nominally with many parties but the position of the Congress was overwhelming. Professor Morris-Jones has described the situation as a one-party dominance system whereas Professor Rajni Kothari has named it the Congress System, a name that has struck and is used almost like a term by scholars who study the Indian party system.

Prof Kothari has classified the Congress System of the Indian party system to be composed of two kinds of parties: a party of consensus (the Congress) and parties of pressure. The latter functioned on the margin or periphery of power whereas the former consisted of various factions that constituted the Congress. Professor Kothari explains thus:

‘It is a system in which a historically dominant party is opposed by a large number of parties and functional groupings that are dispersed throughout the country. The role of the dominant party has been to evolve a consensus on both normative and procedural matters as well as major policy issues. In such a system, the dominant party becomes a norm setter for all other parties and the model set by the Congress had in fact been spreading both in terms of policies and programmes. In this system it is the dominant party that acts as an aggregation by developing into a comprehensive, representative mechanism, it represents all shades of opinion, all major interest groups in the society and indeed all other parties as well’.

There were a few factors that worked to consolidate the hold of the Congress. Firstly the fact that it was seen as the party that was the party of the freedom movement and that did not come into existence in search of political power and had an inclusive ideology that stressed on national unity and accommodation. Secondly the Congress was committed to making the values of democracy and equality, social and economic, a reality at least in its claims and affirmations. Thirdly, it was the only party with a tried and tested nationwide organisational structure and with a strong leadership led by Nehru which eliminated the possibility of faction fights and disintegration based on that that inevitably happens when there are too many tall leaders in a party with their own personal sets of followers.  In fact the charisma and hold of Nehru individually only grew as did his hold over the nation and the capacity to influence and inspire the nation. This was later to a large extent successfully inherited by his daughter, Indira Gandhi when she took control of the Congress party. It is not wrong to say Nehru had acquired a cult following during his lifetime and his daughter Indira later managed to acquire it too.

The parties other than the Congress who together secured as much as 55 per cent of the votes in the first general elections but only about 25 per cent of the seats in parliament mainly worked to constantly pressurise, criticise and censure the government polices thereby trying to influence it and by working to keep alive the theoretical possibility that if the Congress deviated too much from what was the balance of public opinion then it would be displaced from office. The Congress was in many ways not too unhappy to face this challenge as it confirmed their claim that they successfully established and led the birth of a democracy in the new nation.

One of the reasons for the strength of the Congress was the patronage links that it forged with regional satraps and chieftains of different castes and communities and ethnic groups. These leaders could appeal for support for support within their own communities that only they were well placed as senior Congress men to get for the community what the community needed. It has to be remembered this was an era when people looked to the government for everything from modern amenities to jobs and education and health. Thus within local caste groups and communities proximity to the all powerful Congress was all important politically for aspiring leaders.

The Congress system was all about political competition within the party and an opposition that existed to act as a pressure group. The Congress party as the party that got India freedom was best judged by people to be in the position to evolve a national consensus – a great vital necessity to keep together a diverse and varied nation like India. The Congress was committed to avoiding conflict and following a policy of accommodation even at the cost of ideological inconsistencies and effectiveness of government performance. The electoral mobilisation that used to take place by the Congress structure used to be local and mainly along caste, community and factional lines but the locally thrown up leadership used to be aggregated at the state level in a process that was fairly autonomous of central interference or impact.

The Congress did very well in the first three general elections under the leadership of Nehru in 1952, 1957 and 1962. But with the death of Nehru the scene changed and the 1967 elections were very different and very significant. The results of these elections provided the first signs of a multi-party system developing in India. For the first time the Congress was not led by a great charismatic leader of the national movement. India had lost the 1962 war with China and the feeling of humiliation still hung heavy in the air. There had been various cases of corruption that had tarnished the incorruptible public image of the Congress and there was a general economic crisis. The Indian rupee had been devalued, there had been a famine in Bihar, rising prices, very slow economic growth and a general feeling of discontentment among the people. There was also the growing disparity between the rich and poor and a feeling that the capitalist class had benefited from the five year plans that had been launched with much fanfare more than the poor. Plus there were parties like the Jan Sangh led by leaders like Atal Bihari Vajpayee who had successfully managed to raise issues like cow slaughter and touch the religious feelings of a section of the population. For the first time also the opposition parties realising that their votes get split, decided to form united fronts to a large extent and gave the call of opposing, exposing, and deposing the Congress party from power. Thus here had been early indications provided in those elections of both a multi-party system and coalition politics developing which have become the norm today.

The End of the old Congress System 

The results of the elections in 1967 showed for the first time in a real sense that a challenge to Congress domination was conceivable. The Congress failed to secure majorities in eight states and its majority in the Lok Sabha was reduced to very narrow 54 per cent of the seats. But there was also a very wide variety of parties from the very right wing parties to left wing parties like the Communist parties that did well and so it can not be said that a viable alternative to the Congress was clearly visible nor was their a clear cut polarisation for and against the Congress. So while the Congress lost in terms of quantity it still qualitatively in terms of its national wide spread or support base remained the dominant party because no other party could come up with a national presence.

The dismal performance of the Congress increased dissensions inside the Congress and there emerged a series of power struggles. Ultimately Indira Gandhi emerged the victor in that process when she split the party in 1969 and managed to establish her supremacy both in the party and the government. She also decided to go to the people and seek a mandate under her new united leadership of the Congress in 1971, which it seems pre-empted the development of a multi-party system. Also by the promptness and speed and effectively of her moves it seems Indira Gandhi also successfully managed to stop the process of a coalition coming up at the national level. But as a consequence of Indira Gandhi’s style the old Congress system also under went a marked change and the old party structure was many ways altered and damaged for ever. Indira Gandhi’s style was hegemonistic and based on personal loyalty to her. She also relied on populism and plebiscite styled elections to make an attempt to shut the opposition up and decimate it. Even in the 1967 elections Indira Gandhi’s leadership style was questioned but by 1971, she had managed to take over the party and the government. Rajni Kothari has commented on the transition:

‘In course of time, however, (while Nehru was still alive) the Congress party ceased to be a movement and became a party and government. Under Indira Gandhi gradually its role as a broad-based party disappeared and all that remained was the government. Still later under the emergency even the government disappeared and what remained was a caucus’.[2]

1973 onwards Indira Gandhi suffered a loss of popularity due to a nation wide drought in 1971, 1972 and 1973 which was accompanied by high inflation, a massive and very successful railway strike and general economic crises. Further some leaders like Morarji Desai in Gujrat and the legendary JP (Jaiprakash Narain) in Bihar and finally the whole of north India through the early seventies carried out a very successful movement against Congress corruption and high handedness. Their movement continued to heat up and peaked in 1975 when Indira Gandhi for the first and only time in Indian history decided to impose emergency. The Allahabad High Court in June 1975 had given a judgement against Indira Gandhi for electoral malpractices which further added strength to the movement against the Congress and Indira Gandhi. Indira Gandhi’s government  declared national emergency on 26 June, 1975.

The emergency and what happened during that period is a whole subject for historians, but suffice it to say atrocities were committed by the state at a level that was quite unthinkable and that has few parallels in world history. The people were shocked and taken aback and there was a massive reaction from the people against her for it seemed India had ceased to be a democracy. A new coalition emerged led by Janata Party and in the 1977 elections the Congress lost. In fact the coalition building had been so well done that there were clear straight contests in as many as 101 Lok Sabha seats but in a real sense not counting insignificant independents, the number of straight contests were as much as 279. The Congress won only 154 out of the 542 seats and the Janata Party/Janata Dal combine won as many as 298 seats which was a clear majority.

Emergence of a Multi-Party System

The electoral developments of 1977 raised the hope that perhaps parliamentary democracy in India had matured and taken the next step to a point were there would not be one-party dominance anymore. Indeed it was felt that India was close to achieving a two-party system like in the advanced matured democracies of Britain and North America. The events that unfolded proved these hopes to have been premature. The Janata experiment as many people now call it was a reaction to the semi-dictatorship situation that Indira Gandhi had inflicted on the people of India. Also many smaller parties had come together for the sake of their survival and to merely end the Congress dominance rather than any ideological consensus. Naturally therefore once in power these fault lines opened up and there was a series of debilitating bitter squabbles and faction fights. There were many interest groups that were part of the coalition and all of them wanted protection and prominence for their interests. Further there were many leaders with personal individual ambitions and they naturally clashed with each other. Also the factions that dominated the Janata Party in the national parliament were antagonistic to those which had an upper hand in several key Janata controlled state legislatures. One of the most divisive issues that contributed to the fall of the government in 1979 ultimately was the issue of dual membership of the members of the Jan Sangh, the earlier political form of the present day BJP, with the Rashtriya Swyamsevak Sangh (RSS) and affiliated organisations. The RSS was regarded my most as a communal organisation for their militant mobilisation against on Hindu minorities and their suspected role in communal riots. The Jan Sangh members had refused to shed their dual membership resisting all pressure.

Indira Gandhi and the Congress party came back to power in the 1980 elections and the Congress party under her continued to operate like before with Indira herself ruling from the top with a small coterie often referred to as the High Command. Indira Gandhi was killed in 1984 and in the elections that followed the Congress came back to power with Rajiv Gandhi as the Prime Minister. Rajiv Gandhi tried may innovations but the general problems of a deepening economic crisis with growing disparities between the rich and the poor continued and also the process of a certain institutionalisation of corruption.     Later he was himself embroiled in what became one of independent India’s biggest corruption scandals – the Bofors Scandal. His image of being a person free from corruption and greed took a huge battering and got destroyed as his Defence Minister V.P. Singh quit the government and confirmed the allegations and suspicions and joined the opposition that had started rallying around him. Rajiv Gandhi also played into the hands of Hindu communalists who alleged a policy of appeasement of Muslims when he passed a legislation nullifying the Shah Bano judgement of the Supreme Court that had opened the possibility of divorced muslim women enjoying some basic much needed rights. Further he then tried to play a neutralising Hindu card by permitting shilanyas near the disputed site in Ayodhya which only encouraged further militant communalism. Also there was no move back from the authoritarian ownership style of Indira Gandhi in Congress functioning and all decisions on top positions in the party were reserved to be decided by the Gandhi family.

The elections of 1989 were held in these circumstances and proved to be in many ways the most significant ever as it may have truly set in motion a Multi-Party system in India and an era of coalitions that has lasted for almost twenty years now and there are no signs that it can end. The states had started becoming a multi-party system even before 1989 as by 1987 nearly half of the states had come to be ruled by non-Congress parties of one kind or the other. The coalition that took shape in 1989 was truly a coalition for the first time ever as even the 1970s coalitions had one or two parties that were powerful. But in this coalition that saw the coming together of the right wing BJP and the left wing CPI(M) and CPI on the one hand and regional parties from the south like DMK and northern parties like the National conference from the J&K on the other there was formed  a breathtaking pan-Indian national coalition across ideological and regional divides and no one party or two parties were too powerful. Everybody’s support more or less was needed for the coalition to survive.

The National Front as it was called had a short existence of only eleven months and fell apart for partly the same reasons that the government of 1977 had fallen apart for. There was a clash about V.P. Singh and his Reservations agenda which he tried to follow by accepting the recommendations of the Mandal Commission Report. There was a nationwide and bloody strike by students opposing the Mandal Commission recommendations that made the government very unpopular. Further, the BJP led by leaders like Lal Krishna Advani decided to carry out a RathYatra from Somnath to Ayodhya which the government failed to dissuade him from doing even though the BJP was part of the coalition. Finally a scheming Chandrashekhar who had probably felt sidelined when V.P. Singh became the Prime Minister managed to break the Janata Dal and walked out with a large section and formed a separate party called the SJP (Samajwadi Janata Party) that with the support of the Congress formed a minority government. The Congress wanted to act before a new coalition could settle down and the nation got used to a non-Congress regime at the centre and so was happy to play along with Chandrashekhar’s manoeuvres. But soon Congress withdrew its support and the government fell.

Coalition Politics in India 

To have a majority in parliament any government needs to cross the half way mark in the Lok Sabha which has a total strength of 540 members. When the numbers are not available with a single party, two or more parties can combine to vote for a government and allow it to come into existence. When two or more parties add up their numbers in parliament by voting together in a motion of confidence helping a government prove its majority, the arrangement is called a coalition. Usually all the parties join the government but if any party votes for the government but stays out of government that party is regarded as part of the coalition but supporting the government from outside. The need for a coalition becomes urgent when no single party has the majority to form a government on its own. If a coalition is not formed in such situations it leads to the calling for fresh elections.

The modern era of coalition politics has come into being as a consequence of the development of the multi-party system. Many parties as opposed to one or a few have substantial strength today and can win enough seats in parliament. Naturally therefore it has become harder and harder if not impossible for single party majorities in parliament. The major contest today is between coalitions led by the major national parties as opposed to between the parties themselves.

 The elections of 1991 were held in two phases in May and June 1991 because of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination naturally created a sympathy wave but still the Congress could not get a majority and there was a hung parliament. The Congress formed a minority government with support from an assortment of parties. The very fact that the Congress itself formed a government with support from other parties and not on its own and had to look for a coalition showed that the era of coalitions had truly arrived. In fact the Congress indulged in a sordid game of bribing members of parliament to win a vote of confidence in what came to be known as the JMM bribery case. But interestingly the Congress managed to complete its five year term and indeed totally turned the direction of the economic policy of the country away from a state led welfare economy model to a private sector growth led model. The term was marked by the usual levels of faction fights and the Babri Masjid demolition and the communal riots that followed. This angered the Muslim community particularly in north India who drifted away from the Congress. Indeed the politics of north India turned gradually into one of competition for vote banks based on caste and community etc. Also there was a marked communal polarisation in most north Indian and western Indian states like Gujrat between Hindus and Muslims following the Babri Masjid demolition and the communal riots that happened over the following years post that event. The BJP also relatively gained in strength and emerged as the single largest party in the 1996 elections. But the basic new trend of a multi-party system with no single party being strong enough alone to come to power without a coalition did not change. That trend has not changed till now and is unlikely to in the future.

 In this new era of coalitions there is a constant making and unmaking of coalitions and wheeling and dealing between parties for relative positional advantage and a certain dilution of ideological commitments. There is a willingness to compromise ideological moorings for power political considerations that would have been quite unbelievable even a few years back. Who could have thought that atheist parties like the DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) or parties like the TDP (Telgu Desam Party) who have a commitment to secularism can be part of the same coalition government with the avowedly Hindu nationalist BJP that they were part of in the NDA (National Democratic Alliance) government till 2004. The regional parties from the states now hold the balance of power in most situations and bargain hard for offering support to the major coalitions in terms of grants etc for the states that they represent and indeed births in ministries. This has interestingly made regionalism and parochialism in politics somewhat mainstream. Coalition politics is the way of life now.  The blurring of ideological commitments of parties has left many citizens confused and with a feeling of helplessness. There is a feeling that politics is increasingly a game of power play in search of the illicit fruits of office and not any more a place for effective redress of social and economic problems of the people. One has been left surprised for example at the way parties that demonstrate hostility for each other turn into friends for the sake of power and vice versa. For instance the BSP (Bahujan Samaj Party) that has historically always claimed to represent the interests of dalits and backward castes and have been hostile to upper castes and Brahmins have in recent times successfully attempted to forge a social coalition with those very same privileged castes. Similarly many of the left parties that have always vowed for socialism and people’s rights have in recent times diluted their rigid stances on economic policy and approved of policy measures that are at least on the face of them quite right wing like for instance the economic prescriptions of free markets led global trade and investments. Most importantly the dilution of Congress Party’s agenda of Nehruvian Socialism and its replacement by a market led and private business led growth policy has reduced the distance between it and the extreme right wing parties like the BJP to a substantial extent and there is little to tell the difference increasingly between parties. All parties have their share of corruption scandals also and so even choosing the best party for supporting a particular ideology leaves the voter confused. But it can be said coalition politics particularly with the way it has led to empowerment for regional parties from the states has added to India’s search for true federalism in real sense that has been termed by some scholars like Balveer Arora as a kind of ‘electoral federalism’.Another feature of the new era of coalition politics is that most parties are controlled by a few strong individual leaders or families like private fiefdoms and as a consequence there are constant splits and break ups when ambitions clash. Thus it can be said in conclusion the era of coalition politics while empowering many sections that did not count previously has also in a way lowered the standards of our democracy and has not led to the maturity that we have been searching for since independence in ideological terms and in terms of policy slants.