May be India is the only nation with double digit number of political parties. In India, which follows multi-party system, today there exist 8 national parties and 42 state parties. Earlier at the time of independence there used to be only 2 national parties (INC & CPI) and 4 state parties (2 in W.B, 1 IN J.K, 1 in Punjab). Indian National Congress used to be the most powerful party with people Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhai Patel and many other freedom fighters. As years passed on the reins of those party fell into the hands of people with corrupt attitude and ineffective leadership skills. This led to the ideological differences among people of same party and caused the birth of several new parties.
The following are the main reasons for the outburst of these many parties.
1. The inefficiency of national parties in identifying the real leaders and to give equal importance to all states of nation. Neglecting the states which don’t have powerful leaders and showering all benefits to states having vociferous leaders.
2. The opportunistic nature of certain people to usurp the power by using their charisma in some other fields or by using the name and fame of their father’s and fore father’s in politics.
3. In adequate representation of people of different castes and neglecting their interests led to the birth of several caste based parties.
Today we reached a stage where no national party is in a position to gain sufficient majority to form government without the support of state parties. All the so called leaders who formed state parties say that their parties were formed to protect the interests of the state at centre. Now all those principles went for a toss in front of the personal monetary benefits of its founders or leaders.
Today there are some parties are announcing that they are ready to extend their support to party forming central government (INC) if some other parties withdrew their support. The common sentences we listen from those parties which are voluntarily extending their support is to protect government without falling into minority and to keep certain parties away from power.
But the actual reasons behind their support are
a. To protect the black money gained by them from organizations like CBI, ACB and ED through illegal ways when they are in power.
b. To win some portfolios for which there are chances of allocation of huge resources in budget.
These are clear examples which depict lack of principles for political parties and its leaders.
These corrupt people even destroyed the faith of a common man to such an extent, where he is presuming that no person would like to enter politics with an intention to serve nation but just to have some personal gains.
The other effects of the coalition politics in India are:
1. T he central government couldn’t take decisions at proper pace which is hindering the growth of the nation. The delay in decision making process is one of the reasons for recent scandals.
2. In certain cases national priorities are being undermined to certain state’s priorities. For example if we consider the ministry of railways, people like Lalu Prasad Yadav and Mamata Benerjee who held this portfolio in recent past took decisions just to make favour to their states keeping the national interests aside.
An old quotation goes this way. “Two brains are powerful than one”. But today India is facing the problem of “too” many instead of “two”. If we take the nations like China (Communist Party of China), U.S. (Republican Party & Democratic Party) there exist only one or two parties. Those countries are growing with only few obstacles in its path. But India is unable to go ahead with too much of interference of these state parties. It is beneficial if India possess only two or three national parties which are bound to its principles, interests of nation and take care of interests of all states equally.
