People often think that they only have choice between bad and worse in the elections. Hence in the group of bad, they vote for least bad. hence end up in 5 years of rut!
Our two time Prime Minister came from upper house, Rajya Sabha. Why do you think, he never competed for Lok Sabha seat in last 2 terms? is it because the party as well as he did not have confidence in people's capability to elect a wise man? Do you think the he/party kept him away from elections to protect his integrity? Do you think the quality of leaders elected through through direct elections do not meet the requirement of people? Is there a gap between what people choose and what people's requirement is? If there is a gap, who decides what the peoples requirements are and who( Prime minister in this case) should be selected to meet them? Who gave power to party to do all this?
All the above questions point towards the level of autonomy a party has in our political system. In a vast country like India, perfect democracy is not possible. It needs to provide a considerable amount of autonomy to various institutions. Autonomy means power, as Lord Acton quoted "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." This corruption has directly or indirectly lead Authoritarian Party system. Let us understand its development in historical perspective.
To understand the development of Authoritarian party system, we need to first understand even basic conflict which persisted since Independence. Should elected government be accountable to people or party? this debate resulted in ambiguity which provided a path to the current form of party system.
Leadership of party versus Government
Pre-independence era
This era was marked with party democracy at all levels of the cadre, critical decisions were taken based on majority consensus, every idea was discussed among the members of the party. This can be examined through examples of Constituent assembly though being a one-party body, took everyone's ideas and criticism into account while making constitution, It even included non party members like B.R.Ambedkar. Similarly, the decision to start Non-Co-operation movement was taken with 1336 votes for and 886 votes against Gandhiji's resolution. During Second World War, Gandhiji's stand on cooperation with the war effort was rejected by Congress.
Nehru era
As Congress was the only major party which dealt with this problem in the initial years of Independence, lets discuss about it. In November 1946, Jawaharlal Nehru resigned from party presidentship, and joined the interim government on the grounds that the roles of leader of a party and leader of government could not be combined. His successor J.B.Kriplani, however demanded a greater role for Congress Working Committee(CWC) a larger role in the working of the government, and all the government planning should be taken in consultation with them.
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| Jawaharlal Nehru |
Nehru, Sardar Patel and other prominent leaders did not agree to it. They argued that proceedings of Government are secret and cannot be divulged to party. They argued that, party should give ideological direction in long term policies and goals but should not interfere in governance. Eventually J.B.Kriplani resigned from the office. In 1950, another conflict broke out between Right wing conservative Purushottom Das Tandon and Nehru because of difference in ideology and former being elected as Congress president. Nehru, who couldn't imagine right wing outlook prevailing over upcoming government, threatened with his resignation to get Tandon out of presidentship, there was an other conflict between them which remained unresolved until now, that is party's control over elected government. The two conflicts above show how Nehru analysed the varying degree of acceptability of party's intrusion into governments functioning. After demise of Gandhi and Patel, though Nehru was the sole strong leader in congress, he didn't let authoritative tendencies take over him, he respected everyone's opinion. I believe that Nehru's threatening for tandon's resignation is the first step of party's transition from democratic towards authoritarian structure, even then democratic tendency of party survived until Nehru's demise in may 1964.
Post Nehru era: Shastri, Indira and Syndicate
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| Lal Bahadur Shastri |
Nehru in his final fearing degeneration of party democracy because all the cabinet ministers were forming aristocracy and loosing roots in public, with K.Kamraj, came up with a plan which came to be known as Kamraj plan. It was supposed to make six cabinet minters and others to resign and join party cadres for its revival. Unfortunately Nehru died before he could come up with new cabinet. Even then Nehru was so confident in party's democracy that he didn't announce a successor. K.Kamraj, became the next part president, he formed the syndicate. Syndicate was a strong sub group inside Congress. They made Lal Bahadur Shastri the new PM of India. Initially, he was completely under control of syndicate but after sometime he asserted his power in Indo-Pak war of 1965.
Article to be continued
Article to be continued
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