The Era of One Party Dominance

Introduction:

One party dominance can be defined as a system where there is "a category of parties
political organizations that have successively won election victories and whose future defeat
cannot be envisaged or is unlikely for the foreseeable future. Usually, the dominant party
consistently holds majority government, without the need for coalitions. This should not be
confused with the one party system as in the one party system, no other political party is
allowed to hold office whereas in a dominant party system, other political parties exist but
are unlikely to come to power due to the sheer support to one single party. This type of a
situation existed in India in the immediate aftermath of independence where the Indian
National Congress (INC) party enjoyed overwhelming support and majority in both centre
and state governments. India had a party system characterized by dominance coexisting
with competition but without a trace of alternation unlike the one-party system, which
doesn't actually offer any meaningful choice to the citizens of the country. This occurrence is
completely constitutional and parliamentary and happens democratically according to the
will of the people. The roots of extraordinary success of the Congress party go back to the
legacy of the freedom struggle. The Congress brought together diverse groups, whose
interests were often contradictory. By the time of independence, the Congress was
transformed into a rainbow-like social coalition broadly representing India's diversity in
terms of classes and castes, religions and languages and various interests. This coalition-like
character of Congress gave it an unusual strength. The Indian National Congress held power
both at the union and at many states from its Independence in 1947 to 1977, and from 1980
to 1989. It formed minority governments from 1991 to 1996 and from 2004 to 2014.

RESEARCH

The context which facilitated the emergence of parties in India was the nationalist political
organizations first emerged in British Indian provinces and princely states as pressure
groups, with both secular and communal overtones, claiming for representation in
administration. Subsequently, they turned into mass-movement agitating for independence.
Predominantly the Indian Nationalist Movement led by the Indian National Congress. It was
only after the independence that the Parliamentary and the Assembly wings of the
movement started in right earnest, the transformation of the movement into a party.
Similar tendencies with some variations may observed in the left wing and in religion based
parties on the right as well as in the regional parties. In first place, India has developed a
multi-party system and the number of political parties is certainly much more than in other
democratic countries of the world. It has been estimated that over 200 political parties,
have been existing in India since independence. A large number of groups which had
worked within the Congress during the freedom struggle misaligned themselves from the
Congress. They could not reach an agreement with it and decided to set-up independent
parties, certain individuals also set-up political parties to increase their importance in the
politics.

India's multi-party system was different from the multi-party system of countries like France
or Italy. Leading writers on the Indian Party System like Myron Weiner, Rajni Kothari and
Giovanni Sartori have preferred to call it 'single dominant party system'. It means that one
party is so powerful that all other put together may make no match and may be thus in no
position to pose a serious or meaningful challenge to its sway. This position was enjoyed by
the Indian National Congress that had been in power at the states since independence.
Implementation of universal suffrage in a country so densely populated with its majority
population illiterate was no easy task. The elections had to be postponed twice and finally
held from October 1951 to February 1952. It took six months for the campaigning, polling
and counting to be completed. When the results were declared these were accepted as fair
even by the losers. The Times of India held that the polls have confounded all those sceptics
who thought the introduction of adult franchise too risky an experiment in India. Thus,
India’s general election of 1952 became a landmark in the history of democracy all over the
world.

Post- independence era is also known as the 'Nehru Era'. The Congress party, as it was
popularly known, had inherited the legacy of the national movement. It was the only party
then to have an organization spread all over the country. And finally, in Jawaharlal Nehru,
the party had the most popular and charismatic leader in Indian politics. He led the Congress
campaign and toured through the country. Prime Minister Nehru led the Congress to major
election victories in 1957 and 1962. None of the opposition parties could win even one-
tenth of the number of seats won by the Congress. In the Nehru era the only opposition
party that assumed office in a state was the Communist Party in Kerala. The Communist
ministry was dismissed from the office in the wake of the Congress which was in power at
the Centre and in the rest of the state. The Parliament passed extensive reforms that
increased the legal rights of women in Hindu society and further legislated and
untouchability. Nehru advocated a strong initiative to enroll India's children to complete
primary education, and thousands of schools, colleges and institutions of advanced learning,
such as the Indian Institutes of Technology, were founded across the nation against caste
discrimination.

Five-Year Plans were shaped by the Soviet model based on centralised and integrated
national economic programs - no taxation for Indian farmers, minimum wage and benefits
for blue-collar workers, and the nationalisation of heavy industries such as steel, aviation,
shipping, electricity, and mining. Village common lands were seized, and an extensive public
works and industrialization campaign resulted in the construction of major dams, irrigation
canals, roads, thermal and hydroelectric power stations, and many more. All these policies
and reforms made the Prime minister very popular and mobilised popular support in favour
of the Congress Party which ensured consecutive successes in central and regional elections
for many years to come. The extent of the victory of the Congress was artificially boosted by
our electoral system. The Congress won three out of every four seats but it did not get even
half of the votes. This is because our country follows a system of 'first-past-the-post. In this
system of election, that has been adopted in our country, the party that gets more votes
than others tends to get much more than its proportional share. That is exactly what
worked in favour of the Congress. The capacity of the Congress organization to adapt its
structure and functioning to changing circumstances would have been insufficient to sustain
the Congress in power after independence if the Congress had not also evinced the ability to
recruit leaders and members from an ever broadening social base. Certainly the congress
would not have been able to maintain support throughout its long history if it had not been
able to harness the social changes let loose by the forces of modernization, industrialization,
and democratization which have swept over India in the past century.

Success of the Congress Party can be attributed to a few other reasons as well. Many
leaders who were in the forefront of that struggle were now contesting elections as
Congress candidates. The Congress was already a very well-organized party and by the time
the other parties could even think of a strategy, the Congress had already started its
campaign. In fact, many parties were formed only around Independence or after that. Thus,
the Congress had the 'first off the blocks' advantage.

As already discussed above, the nature of Congress dominance was completely democratic
unlike many of the countries. In the rest of the cases the dominance of one party was
ensured by compromising democracy. Many parties contested elections in conditions of free
and fair elections and yet the Congress managed to win election after election.

In this first phase, India had a party system characterized by dominance coexisting with
competition but without a trace of alternation. Neither, by and large, did opposition parties
share the power in coalitions with the Congress at the states level. So here was a
competitive party system in which the competing parties played rather dissimilar roles. The
ruling Congress party was a party of consensus and the opposition parties were parties of
pressure. That is to say, the opposition parties played a role that was quite distinctive.
Instead of providing an alternative to the Congress party, they function by influencing
sections within the Congress. They opposed by making Congress-men oppose. Groups
within the ruling party assumed the role of opposition parties, often quite openly, reflecting
the ideologies and interests of other parties. In 1950 regional parties were present in the
states of madras and Punjab which have developed a self-identity of their own during the
colonial period, though they had not yet come to power during this period. In both these
regions the regional movement had not been fully assimilated into the Congress-led
national movement though it was not antagonistic to it. There was a parallel movement
seeking self-identity. Other states which had experienced strong regional movements in the
colonial period Maharashtra, Andhra and Gujarat did not develop regional party though
they had a fairly well developed regional language and literature through which this regional
 consciousness could be expressed. The leadership of the Congress party in the states was
drawn from the regional castes dominant at that time for example, the Marathas in
Maharashtra, Patels in Gujarat, and Reddis in Andhra etc. In the Hindi heartland states of
UP, Bihar, Rajasthan and MP, despite linguistic homogeneity no separate regional identity
had grown. These states became the bastions of the Congress Party; here sub-regional
movements emerged much later, after a time-lag. The linguistic reorganization of the states
in 1956 and later redrawing of some state boundaries brought territorial boundaries in a
closer alignment with their socio-cultural coordinates. Congress was able to maintain its
position as a party occupying most of the space in the political system because there
plurality within the dominant party which it more representative, flexibility and internal
competition. At the same time, it prepared to absorb groups and movements from outside
the party and thus prevent other parties from gaining strength. The task of creating and
sustaining the immensely broad Congress coalition in that phase was, facilitated by the
complexities and ambiguities of Indian society, which prevented polarization and formation
of contradictions that might fracture such an all-embracing alliance of interests. Thus the
main features of the party system from 1952-1967 were intraparty competition within the
congress party, based on a historical consensus, and opposition remained in the position of
the pressure groups. The Congress party was successful in evolving a national consensus.
The party system was oriented to conflict avoidance and group accommodation even at the
cost of ideological coherence and effectiveness of performance. However, there were four
reasons for the dominance of the Congress Party in the first three general elections in India
is as follows:

1. The Congress Party had inherited the legacy of the National Movement. Moreover, it
was the only political party to have an organization spread all over the country.
2. The Congress Party had the most popular and charismatic leader in Nehru. The party
got 364 of the 489 seats in the first Lok Sabha elections and finished way ahead of any other
challenger.
3. It was already a well-organized party and till other parties could reach up to their
level, Congress had already begun with its campaigning. This gave the party ‘first off the
blocks’ advantage.
4. By the time the country was independent, the party had spread its wings to the local
level.
5. In the second and third general elections held in 1957 and 1962, respectively, the
Congress Party kept its position intact in the Lok Sabha. This was due to the First Past the
Post system followed in our electoral process.

In this way, the Congress ruled all over the country at the national and state levels. Despite
all odds, India decided to choose the democratic path of nation building after getting
independence. Our leaders didn’t see politics as a problem rather saw it as a means to solve
the problems. The era of congress party dominance paved a greater way for politics in India
as it gave new ideas for party system and many regional parties emerged. The congress
brought many accomplishment and opportunities in the state and central level. Under the
leadership of Nehru, advanced learning, schools, colleges and many institutions were
established. Caste discrimination and untouchability were all reformed in the parliament.
Farmers were provided with special reforms and no taxation was implemented for farmers.
As a result, the congress began to gain more popularity comparing to other political parties
which paved a great way for their dominance in the Indian political system.