India’s party system is now more fragmented than ever before in its history.  In the first elections in independent India, about fifty parties competed (see chart), only a handful were viable contenders to win seats at the national level, and only one party — the Congress — was a viable contender to form a government. In the 2009 parliamentary elections, over three hundred parties competed, with another thousand registered with the Election Commission. There were at last count eighteen parties propping up the Congress-led government. Another twenty parties sit in opposition.  And hundreds of parties, while they did not make it to the national parliament, nevertheless remain significant forces in state assembly elections.  

According to a commonly held point of view, such a high degree of party fragmentation is bad news for India’s democracy.  India is one of the most diverse countries in the world, with many dimensions of difference, including those based on class, income, religion, sect, language, dialect, caste and tribe.  A country with this much social diversity, the argument goes, needs a single political party, or a small number of political parties to hold it together.  This at any rate is a standard political science argument that has led many political scientists to champion the “aggregative role” the Congress historically played in Indian politics. And it is certainly the argument that the Congress has often reiterated in its election campaigns, promising that it is the only party that can unite India against various unnamed “fissiparous tendencies.”   

... contd.