Understanding The Demo'crazy' Of India

With the nation gearing up for the elections, it is integral to know how India operates and why it is quite appropriate to govern such a diverse country like India.

Democracy in India
India - a nation comprising of 29 states, 7 union territories, 22 different official languages, various different religions and people from different castes and social economic classes - became a democratic country post its Independence, from the British in the year 1947, on 26th January 1950. From then, India has been the world’s largest democracy. Citizens of India, being a part of a democracy, have the rights to vote and elect their preferred leaders, irrespective of their discriminatory factors such as gender, caste, race, colour or religion.

The elected executive is in power for 5 years.

Multi-Party System
There are two types of democracies:
·A Parliamentary System
·A Presidential System
A Presidential System is the type of democracy followed by countries such as the United States of America.

A Parliamentary System is the type of democracy followed by India.

A multi-party system, now, refers to the system in which multiple political parties across the nation, run for the national elections, and all the same capacity to win and gain control of the government offices, separately or in coalition (a collaboration of multiples political parties working together).

Unlike, the one-part systems and the two-part systems, multi-party systems are more common in parliamentary systems - where the executive is accountable to the parliament, the legislature - than presidential systems- where the executive is not accountable to the legislature.

A country chooses its suitable party system based on nature of its society, it’s social and regional divisions, its history of politics and it’s system of elections.

Examples of a few countries which have implemented the multi-party system which has also helped in efficiently running their democracies:- Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Lebanon, Maldives, Mexico, Moldova, Nepal, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, the Philippines. These countries have been successfully running their democracies using multi-party system.

India and the multi-party system

India being a democracy of various diverse elements like religion, castes, social classes and ethnicities, this makes the multi- system appropriate for a democracy such as India.

India uses the multi-party system with an elected parliamentary system comprising of members from both state and national parties.

India uses first-past-the post elections- when the voters indicate on the ballot the preferred candidate; the candidate who receives the most votes wins.

The Multi-party system fits for a country such as India, as being the largest democracy, it is not possible for a single party to govern a big nation.

Advantages of having a multi-party system in India:
·In a multi-party system, people get a choice to elect their preferred candidates.
·Multi-party system ensures that power is not left in one’s hand for a long time.
·Multi-party systems also provide an equal opportunity for regional and national parties to compete during the elections.

·Multi-party systems also give an opportunity to present many ideas to improve the nation.
·All views and ideological stances are presented in the Parliament; that reduces the risk of a dictatorship in the nation.

India consists of 7 national political parties:

• All India Trinamool Congress (AITC)

• Bahujan Samaj Party (BSJ)

• Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)

• Communist Party of India (CPI)

• Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI (M))

• Indian National Congress (INC)

• National Congress Party (NCP).

India consists of 51 recognized state parties. A few of them include:

• Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)

• All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK)

• All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM)

• Shiv Sena (SS)

• Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS)

• Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)

• Kerala Congress (KC(M))

However, some fallbacks could include, the rise of parties being formed based on race, caste, religion, gender or colour, which will prompt the fundamentals of a democracy to fade away.

As the years go by and as the power is being passed on to different people and different parties, it is important to see, whether the current and the future executives follow the ideals and respect the reasons behind why India was made a nation which followed the multi-party system. As by not doing so, could only result in the nation piling into more chaos and disruption.