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Congress party system

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CONGRESS PARTY SYSTEM

  • Congress party has been the most important political institution in India’s modern political history.
  • It won nearly 3/4th of the seats in Parliament in the national elections in 1952,1957 and 1962. The congress ruled every state until 1967.
  • Key feature of congress dominance system:
  • I) the large degree of autonomy that provincial units were able to assert in relation to the central party leadership. Their recommendations for candidates for parliamentary or assembly seats or CM were almost always accepted by the central leadership.
  1. ii) Representation of various groups in its higher echelons such as Muslims, SCs, STs and regional and linguistic groups.

iii) It enjoyed enormous prestige with the rural and urban masses.

  • The basis of congress hegemony: it was based on a concrete set of achievements such as:
  1. An independent model of industrial growth;
  2. Considerable reduction in large scale feudal landholding, which benefited the upper peasantry
  • Growth in infrastructure
  1. Expansion in educational facilities and technical personnel.
  • This system signifies a national definition of the polity with an emphasis on the state’s responsibility towards society.
  • It delivered some tangible benefits to the broad mass of population through various developments projects, the initiation and construction of public sector and the provision of public services such as health, education and transport.

 

Demise of congress system:

Congress system worked until the split in the congress in 1969.

  • The split transformed the Congress party from a loose coalition of ideologically diverse groups, which stretched from the Right to the left to a populist party, in which the supremacy of the parliamentary wing over the was once and for all established.

 

Evolution of congress into an electoralist catch-all party:

  • This period onwards, congress evolved into an electoralist catch-all party.

The breakdown of congress system was starkly evident after Indira Gandhi’s disastrous Emergency experiment, which resulted in a sharp and substantial drop in the vote base.

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