Opinion India’s missing rank and file

I am driven to recount this example as I observe the shambolic fashion in which all parties are behaving in the Maharashtra elections. India does not seem to have any political party which can claim to have ‘rank and file’. Each faction seems to have its own leader who wants a ticket,and,on not getting it,defects to another party. The Congress has to edge out a senior MLA to accommodate the President’s son. (Would it be asking too much to have a convention,if not a law,that during the President’s term no family member should take part in electoral politics?) Seats are assigned to individuals from the top,and there seems to be no connection between the candidate and local members.

Even the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) seems to have no disciplined soldiers any more. The BJP has its personalised factions as does the Shiv Sena,the National Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress. The political party is not a well-drilled modern army,but like the old Indian armies which had disparate bits brought together on the eve of battle and which would disperse after the battle,if not during it. Parties select candidates with no reference to local members or with any rules being obeyed. Local constituencies do not interview candidates nor do they vote to choose them.

It was not always so and the decay of political culture is something which has come about with the connivance of the political classes. In the Fifties,and even in the Sixties,it was possible to imagine that India had political parties with some internal structure and discipline. What has happened is that politics is now such an immensely profitable occupation that winning a seat in a state or union legislature means a lot of money. Even the declared assets of candidates,assuming they are correct,are huge and when you see how much the assets of elected MLAs or MPs grow from election to election you see how blatantly politics has become a money-making activity.

To be a leader of even a small local faction costs money and you have to keep your claque sweet. When a sitting MLA fails to win a seat,he faces the prospect of impoverishment and abandonment by his friends. Hence,the disloyalty and flight to whichever party will accommodate him. Parties are then a temporary collection of local satraps who will gather their troops for the election battle and if one party won’t have them they will migrate elsewhere.

How long this process can go on without totally corrupting Indian democracy is an open question. Some may say that this is the true reflection of our culture,an Indianisation of western democracy. If there are no serious political parties but only fragments which float independently and come together temporarily for election,where is the political debate about issues rather than personalities?

There are of course too many parties and no party controls its members any longer. To reform this system,you need someone inside who can see that this decay must be stopped. I doubt however that there is any force now that can do this.