Political Parties

Why This Matters

Ask any person on the street, even in a far-off village, what democracy is. Many of them may not know much about the Constitution or about how the government is built. But almost all of them will know the names of a few political parties. They will know who is “in power” and who is “against them”. For most ordinary people, parties are the face of democracy. When you see a flag, a symbol, a rally or a poster at election time, you are looking at a political party at work.

And yet, parties are also the thing people complain about the most. “All parties are the same.” “They only fight and divide us.” “They are full of money and family rule.” You have probably heard these lines at home. So a fair question rises up: if parties cause so many problems, why do we have them at all? Could we not just run a democracy without them?

This chapter answers exactly that. It shows what a party really is, the quiet but huge jobs it does that nobody else does, and why no large democracy in the world has managed to live without parties. It also looks honestly at what is wrong with parties, and what can be done to fix them. By the end, you will not just say “parties are bad” or “parties are good”. You will understand how they work, why we need them, and how to judge them. That is the difference between repeating an opinion and actually thinking like a citizen.

The Big Idea

A political party is a group of people who come together to contest elections and hold power in the government. They agree on some policies and programmes for society, which they believe will do the most good. A party always stands for a part of society, so it takes a side — that is why it is called a “party”. Every party has three parts: the leaders, the active members (workers), and the followers (supporters and voters). We need parties because a large democracy cannot run without them — they bundle millions of scattered opinions into a few clear choices, form and run the government, act as the opposition, and connect ordinary people to power. Countries end up with one-party, two-party or multi-party systems depending on their history and society — and India’s huge diversity is why it has a multi-party system. Parties also face real problems — too much power in a few hands, family rule, money and muscle power, and offering no real choice — and a democracy stays healthy only when these are reformed.

Let’s Break It Down

Before we go further, let us make sure two words from earlier classes are fresh in your mind, because the whole chapter leans on them.

What exactly is a political party?

A political party is a group of people who come together to contest elections and hold power in the government. Notice the two aims packed into that sentence: first, to fight elections, and second, to use the power they win. A party is not just a debating club. It exists to actually run things.

To win that power, a party agrees on some policies and programmes — its plan for what it would do for society if it came to power. Since people disagree about what is good for society, a party picks a side and tries to convince voters that its ideas are the best. So a party is always partisan — it stands for a part of society, not all of it equally. This is not a weakness. It is the whole point. A party is known by which part it stands for, which policies it backs, and whose interests it protects.

So, what is a party actually made of? It has three parts. Figure 4.1 below lays them out, from the small group at the top to the huge crowd at the bottom.

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Here is a quick check to make sure the idea has landed.

Why does a democracy need parties at all?

This is the question everyone secretly asks, and NCERT answers it with a clever thought experiment. So let us actually do that experiment. Imagine an election with no parties at all — every single candidate stands alone, as an “independent”. What would happen?

Think it through. With no parties, no candidate could promise any big change for the whole country, because each one is just one person fighting for their own small area. After the election, even if a government somehow forms, nobody planned together, so nobody agrees on what to do next. Worse, when something goes wrong, who do you blame? There is no single team responsible for running the country. You could throw out your own local winner, but no one is answerable for the nation as a whole. The result would be confusion with no direction and no accountability.

Figure 4.2 below puts the two worlds side by side so you can see exactly what parties fix.

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So parties do three jobs that loose independents simply cannot. They bundle millions of different opinions into a few clear choices, so voters can actually pick a direction. They make one team responsible for running the whole country, so there is someone to praise or blame. And they create a stable government plus an opposition, so power can be used and also checked. This is why parties grew up everywhere the moment countries became large representative democracies. A hundred years ago, very few countries had parties. Today, very few countries are without them. That is not a coincidence — it is because large democracy needs them.

What do political parties actually do? The functions

We have already touched on the jobs parties do. Now let us list them properly, because in the exam this is one of the most common questions. A political party performs seven main functions. Figure 4.3 below shows them as spokes around a central hub so you can picture them together, and then we explain each one.

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Let us walk through the seven, one by one:

1. Parties contest elections. In most democracies, elections are mainly a fight between candidates put up by parties. (How a party picks its candidates differs from country to country — in the USA, ordinary members often choose; in India, the top leaders usually decide.)
2. Parties put forward policies and programmes, and voters choose between them. Each of us has our own views on what is good for society. But no government can act on a thousand different views at once. So a party gathers many similar opinions together and turns them into a few clear positions. A government is then expected to follow the line of the ruling party.
3. Parties make laws. Laws are formally debated and passed in the legislature (the law-making body). But since most members belong to a party, they usually vote the way their party’s leaders decide.
4. Parties form and run governments. The big decisions are taken by the political executive — the ministers. Parties recruit leaders, train them, and make them ministers to run the government the way the party wants.
5. The losers act as the opposition. Parties that lose the election do not vanish. They voice different views, criticise the government for its failures or wrong policies, and rally people against it. This keeps the government on its toes.
6. Parties shape public opinion. With lakhs of members and activists across the country, parties raise issues, highlight problems, and sometimes launch movements. Often, opinions in society take shape along the lines that parties draw.
7. Parties connect people to the government and its welfare schemes. For an ordinary citizen, it is far easier to walk up to a local party worker than to a government officer. So people feel close to parties even when they do not fully trust them — and a party that ignores people’s needs gets thrown out at the next election.

How many parties should a democracy have? Party systems

In a democracy, any group of citizens is free to start a party. So there are usually a huge number of registered parties — more than 750 are registered with the Election Commission of India. But most of them never really matter in elections. Only a handful are serious contenders. So the real question is: how many major parties is good for a democracy?

Countries settle into one of three patterns, called party systems. Figure 4.4 below compares all three, with example countries and a note on why India’s fits.

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Let us take them one at a time.

In a one-party system, only one party is allowed to run the government. China is the example — only the Communist Party is permitted to rule. Even though people are technically free to form parties, the system does not allow real competition. This is not a democratic option. A genuine democracy must allow at least two parties to compete and give each a fair chance to come to power.

In a two-party system, power usually moves back and forth between two main parties. Other small parties may exist and win a few seats, but only the two big ones have a real chance of winning a majority and forming the government. The USA and the UK are the classic examples.

In a multi-party system, several parties compete, and more than two have a real chance of coming to power — either on their own or by teaming up with others. India is a multi-party system. Here, governments are often formed by parties joining together in a coalition. When parties join hands to fight elections and win power together, that group is called an alliance or front (for example, in India there have been alliances like the NDA, the UPA and the Left Front). A multi-party system can look messy and lead to unstable governments. But it lets a wide variety of interests and opinions get a voice.

Before we go further, let us lock in one word that keeps coming up.

So, which system is best? That is actually not a good question. A country does not get to choose its party system. It grows slowly over a long time, shaped by the country’s society, its regional and social divisions, its history, and its election rules. None of these change quickly. So each country ends up with the system that fits its own situation. India ended up with a multi-party system because a country this large and this diverse simply cannot be packed into two or three parties — there are too many regions, languages and communities for that. What looks “unstable” is really the price of letting everyone be heard.

National parties and State parties

India is a federal country (power is shared between the Centre and the states). Federal democracies tend to grow two kinds of parties: parties that exist all over the country, and parties that exist mainly in one state. So India has national parties and state parties (also called regional parties).

But first — what makes a party “recognised” in the first place? Every party must register with the Election Commission. The Commission treats all parties equally, but it gives some special help to large, established parties. The most important help is a reserved election symbol — a unique symbol that only that party’s official candidates may use. (The symbol matters enormously, because many voters recognise a party by its picture, not its name.) Parties that get this privilege are called recognised parties. The Election Commission has fixed clear rules for how many votes and seats a party must win to be recognised. Figure 4.5 below shows the criteria for each level.

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A party that wins at least 6 percent of the total votes in a state Assembly election and wins at least 2 seats is recognised as a State party. A party that wins at least 6 percent of votes in Lok Sabha (or Assembly) elections in four states and wins at least 4 seats in the Lok Sabha is recognised as a National party. As per the Election Commission’s 2023 notification, India has six recognised national parties.

Here are the well-known national parties and what they stand for, in brief:

Apart from these, most major parties are classified by the Election Commission as State parties (regional parties). Note one careful point: “state party” does not always mean the party only cares about one region. Some are all-India parties that have only managed to succeed in a few states (like the Samajwadi Party or Rashtriya Janata Dal). Others are proudly tied to their state’s identity (like the Biju Janata Dal, the Sikkim Democratic Front, or the Mizo National Front). Over the last three decades, these state parties have grown stronger. Because no single national party could win a majority on its own for many years, national parties had to form alliances with state parties — and that has actually strengthened federalism and democracy in India, by giving regions a real share of power at the Centre.

What is wrong with political parties? The four challenges

We have seen how vital parties are. But because they are the most visible face of democracy, people blame them for everything that goes wrong — and some of that blame is fair. Dissatisfaction focuses on four main problems. Figure 4.6 below lists each challenge on the left and pairs it with the reform that tries to fix it on the right; we will explain the challenges first, then the reforms.

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Here are the four challenges:

1. Lack of internal democracy. Inside many parties, power piles up at the very top with one or a few leaders. Parties often do not keep proper membership registers, do not hold regular internal meetings, and do not hold internal elections. So ordinary members never get real information or any way to influence decisions. Loyalty to the leader ends up mattering more than loyalty to the party’s principles, and anyone who disagrees finds it hard to stay.
2. Dynastic succession. This grows straight out of the first problem. Because there is no open, fair way for an ordinary worker to rise, leaders end up favouring people close to them — often their own family. In many parties, the top posts stay inside one family. This is unfair to other members, and bad for democracy, because people without enough experience or real support land in positions of power.
3. The growing role of money and muscle power. Since parties are focused on winning, they take short-cuts. They often pick candidates who already have, or can raise, a lot of money. The rich people and companies who fund parties then gain influence over the party’s policies. In some cases, parties even back criminals who can win. This worries democrats everywhere.
4. Parties often offer no meaningful choice. For a real choice, parties must actually be different. But across the world, the differences between parties have shrunk — for example, the Labour and Conservative parties in Britain now agree on most big things. In India too, the major parties’ economic policies have come closer together. So a voter who wants a truly different path often has nowhere to turn — especially since the same leaders keep jumping from one party to another.

Let us pause on why two of these are so harmful, because it is easy to say “money is bad” without seeing the mechanism. When money power rules, the people who fund the party — not the ordinary voters — start shaping its decisions. So the party stops answering to the public and starts answering to its donors. And when a party has no internal democracy and runs on family rule, an ordinary worker can never rise on merit, and the leaders never have to face their own members. Both problems do the same damage: they shut ordinary people out and make leaders unaccountable. And a leader who answers to no one is the exact opposite of what democracy is for. That is why these are not small complaints — they strike at the heart of the whole idea.

How can parties be reformed?

Reform is tricky, because the people who would have to pass the reforms are the party leaders themselves — and why would they tie their own hands? Still, India has taken some real steps. Before we list them, two legal words will come up, so let us clear them now.

With those clear, here are the main reforms India has tried:

• The anti-defection law. The Constitution was amended so that if an MLA or MP changes parties after being elected, they lose their seat in the legislature. This has reduced defection a lot. (But it has a side effect: it makes any disagreement harder, because members must now accept whatever the party leaders decide.)
• Compulsory affidavits. Following a Supreme Court order, every candidate must now file an affidavit declaring their property and any criminal cases pending against them. This puts a lot of information before the public. (The catch: there is no system yet to check whether what they declare is actually true.)
• Election Commission orders. The Election Commission has ordered parties to hold their organisational elections and to file their income tax returns. Parties have started doing this — but sometimes it is only a formality, so it is not clear how much real internal democracy it has created.

Beyond these, people often suggest more reforms: a law to force parties to keep member registers and hold open internal elections; a rule giving at least about one-third of tickets to women; and state funding of elections (the government helping pay election costs in cash or in kind). These have not been accepted yet. And we should be careful — over-regulating parties can backfire, pushing them to find sneaky ways around the law.

So what can ordinary people do? Quite a lot, actually. Citizens, the media, and voluntary organisations can put pressure on parties through petitions, publicity and protests. Most powerfully, if people who care join parties in large numbers, they can change the parties from the inside. In the end, the quality of parties depends on the quality of the citizens who take part. Democracy is not a machine that runs by itself — it runs on people who pay attention.

Common Mistakes

Before the practice, let us clear up the misunderstandings that trip students up the most in this chapter. Read each one and notice why it feels true.

Quick Check

Let us test the big ideas with a few quick questions. Pick an answer, then read the explanation.

Practice Problems

Time to write like the exam. Try each question fully on paper first, then reveal the model answer and compare.

Easy

Medium

Challenge

Summary

After this chapter, you should be able to explain each of these in your own words:

• A political party is a group that comes together to contest elections and hold power, agreeing on shared policies and programmes; it stands for a part of society, so it is partisan.
• A party has three components: the leaders, the active members (workers), and the followers.
• A democracy needs parties because, without them, there would be no stable government, no clear policy choice and no accountability — independents alone cannot do these jobs.
• Parties perform seven functions: contest elections, offer policies, make laws, form and run governments, act as the opposition, shape public opinion, and connect people to the government.
• There are three party systems — one-party, two-party and multi-party. A country does not choose its system; it grows from the country’s society and history. India’s multi-party system fits its huge diversity.
• Parties are national or state (regional); recognised parties meet fixed vote-and-seat rules set by the Election Commission and get a reserved election symbol.
• Parties face four challenges: lack of internal democracy, dynastic succession, money and muscle power, and offering no real choice.
• Reforms include the anti-defection law, compulsory affidavits on assets and criminal cases, and ECI orders on internal elections — plus pressure and participation from ordinary citizens.

What’s Next

You now understand the machinery of democracy: how people vote, how power is shared, and how parties compete to run the government. But one big question still hangs in the air. After all this — the elections, the parties, the coalitions — does democracy actually deliver? Does it give people better lives, more equality, and more dignity than other forms of government?

That is exactly what Chapter 5: Outcomes of Democracy asks. It weighs up what democracy is good at and where it falls short — on quality of government, on economic growth, on reducing inequality and poverty, and on the dignity and freedom of citizens. After studying how democracy works, you will finally judge how well it works. See you there.