The Political Future of Smaller Parties in India
By: Amit Bhushan Date: 8th May 2014
India has so far nurtured scores of political parties who have little enrichment to offer by the way of political ideology and the worth of the political program organized there-under for popularizing the ideology for the society. With a young and restive crowd starting to question the leadership on delivery of goodies and more ready to experiment, the situation has started to complicate a little.
So far, these parties have survived by maintaining a stranglehold on select area or a state by aligning leaders and musclemen of select caste and religious groups. This is done by allowing these leaders to lord over a select business domain area either by self or by lording over the association of the business community. Suitable economic incentive model is defined for the services of the lord and the trouble makers for the business in bureaucracy or in ordinary public are kept under control. When such parties fail in maintaining this equation, the allegiance of the leaders shift and new political leadership emerges. Public leader by far is a myth although an ‘in-thing’, thanks to media, and many leaders are attempting to build persona to convince that they are public leader. Basically, the public has to elect leaders from what are available and the ones that are available are those that are already ‘in business’ and have maintained themselves by aligning with such local forces and factors which catapult them to a threshold level for further growth.
These leaders then indulge in power-play either by careful calculation or via natural instinct to ensure that rival power centers do not emerge as challenge. This done by ensuring that –
· Leadership in rival caste groups remain divided with multiple claimants of command. Various social methods as well as commercial tactics are used to undermine and break any major challenger as and when cited.
· Rival leaders are kept under cloud to ensure trust deficit so that they are unable to mobilize public opinion
· Often public posture of bonhomie and mutual support is maintained so that they either find it difficult to establish credibility as true opposition or are under pressure to tone rebellion.
Now the young public has become a bit more vocal about performance or its absence. Even more important, is the fact that public is now become ready to experiment with politics, media, governance systems and policies etc. This attitude of pubic seems to be having potential to give rise to new leaders and different kind of leadership, as envisaged by political leaders, pundits and media. So these parties and their leaders seem to be under pressure to at least build image of a performer to begin with and thus satisfy the new demands of public. Let’s hope we also see some credible performance and leaders to come up as well. Since all we have witnessed is leaders engaged with the trivia and broad scale failures hidden under garb of ‘populism’ of poll victors and ‘undicussed/unchallenged knowns’ (in mass media) and mutual understanding amongst political leaders.
However the attitude of public to experiment and even allow newbies to power creates complications for the smaller parties who will now be under pressure to show performance. Hitherto, their survival depended on the ‘talk shows’ run by media to drum up TRPs/Circulation for which only a few savvy questions and wit was needed. The hold on local factors ensured relative easy victory on the halo created with the help of media. The image also helped in courting business tycoons in far flunked areas in need of political patronage. Thus a virtuous cycle which lasted long thanks to situation where public had little voice to protest.
Now since performance needs to be shown, so there will be need to take positions. This may be to either align with the government with constructive support or to build image of an aggressive opposition based of interests of the local voters. With political analyst now spread far and wide and the art seeping in amongst society, a rethink on political strategies are the call of the day failing which some or the other new rivals may soon appear to be a tough challenger provided of course he plays his cards well.
By: Amit Bhushan Date: 8th May 2014
India has so far nurtured scores of political parties who have little enrichment to offer by the way of political ideology and the worth of the political program organized there-under for popularizing the ideology for the society. With a young and restive crowd starting to question the leadership on delivery of goodies and more ready to experiment, the situation has started to complicate a little.
So far, these parties have survived by maintaining a stranglehold on select area or a state by aligning leaders and musclemen of select caste and religious groups. This is done by allowing these leaders to lord over a select business domain area either by self or by lording over the association of the business community. Suitable economic incentive model is defined for the services of the lord and the trouble makers for the business in bureaucracy or in ordinary public are kept under control. When such parties fail in maintaining this equation, the allegiance of the leaders shift and new political leadership emerges. Public leader by far is a myth although an ‘in-thing’, thanks to media, and many leaders are attempting to build persona to convince that they are public leader. Basically, the public has to elect leaders from what are available and the ones that are available are those that are already ‘in business’ and have maintained themselves by aligning with such local forces and factors which catapult them to a threshold level for further growth.
These leaders then indulge in power-play either by careful calculation or via natural instinct to ensure that rival power centers do not emerge as challenge. This done by ensuring that –
· Leadership in rival caste groups remain divided with multiple claimants of command. Various social methods as well as commercial tactics are used to undermine and break any major challenger as and when cited.
· Rival leaders are kept under cloud to ensure trust deficit so that they are unable to mobilize public opinion
· Often public posture of bonhomie and mutual support is maintained so that they either find it difficult to establish credibility as true opposition or are under pressure to tone rebellion.
Now the young public has become a bit more vocal about performance or its absence. Even more important, is the fact that public is now become ready to experiment with politics, media, governance systems and policies etc. This attitude of pubic seems to be having potential to give rise to new leaders and different kind of leadership, as envisaged by political leaders, pundits and media. So these parties and their leaders seem to be under pressure to at least build image of a performer to begin with and thus satisfy the new demands of public. Let’s hope we also see some credible performance and leaders to come up as well. Since all we have witnessed is leaders engaged with the trivia and broad scale failures hidden under garb of ‘populism’ of poll victors and ‘undicussed/unchallenged knowns’ (in mass media) and mutual understanding amongst political leaders.
However the attitude of public to experiment and even allow newbies to power creates complications for the smaller parties who will now be under pressure to show performance. Hitherto, their survival depended on the ‘talk shows’ run by media to drum up TRPs/Circulation for which only a few savvy questions and wit was needed. The hold on local factors ensured relative easy victory on the halo created with the help of media. The image also helped in courting business tycoons in far flunked areas in need of political patronage. Thus a virtuous cycle which lasted long thanks to situation where public had little voice to protest.
Now since performance needs to be shown, so there will be need to take positions. This may be to either align with the government with constructive support or to build image of an aggressive opposition based of interests of the local voters. With political analyst now spread far and wide and the art seeping in amongst society, a rethink on political strategies are the call of the day failing which some or the other new rivals may soon appear to be a tough challenger provided of course he plays his cards well.