Emerging Trends in Indian Politics

Dated : 26-03-20
Dear students, this is the third and the last part in the series of notes I have sent to you all on
the above topic. Kindly give it a thorough reading.
15. Aged Parliament: India is called a young country since more than 65 per cent of its
population below 35 a. However, if we are to look analysing the demography of our Lok Sabha
MPs since 1999, India Today’s Data Intelligence Unit (DIU) has found that for the last 20
years, the average age of Lok Sabha MPs has always been above 50 proving that experience
wins over truth.. According to Census 2011, around 11 per cent of the Indian population comes
in the age bracket of 25-30. In Lok Sabha 2019, hardly 1.5 per cent MPs came in this age group.
The Census 2011 also tells us that more than 25 per cent of the Indian population came in the
age bracket of 25-40; this group accounts for only 12 per cent in the 17th Lok Sabha. As we
go up the age pyramid, the percentage of Indian population decreases, but the percentage of
MPs increases. The maximum MPs (16 per cent) come from the 51-55 age group.

Not only is youth representation declining in Parliament, but the average age of MPs has also
risen in the last 20 years. The average age of MPs in 1999 (13th Lok Sabha) was 52. It remained
pretty much the same in 2004. In 2009, the average age of the Lok Sabha rose to 54. In 2014,
it reached its peak at 59. After being on the rise for three consecutive elections, the average age
has come down to 55 years.

16. Poor participation of Women in Politics: India was one of the first countries to have a
female leader, but more than five decades after Indira Gandhi became prime minister, women's
participation in politics remains stubbornly low. Almost half of India's 900 million voters are
women, and both Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the opposition Congress Party
appealed heavily to female voters in their election campaigns. Female voter turnout has
historically been low, but this year for the first time women turned out in roughly the same
numbers as men at about 67%.

The proportion of women in the lower house rose to 14% - two percentage points higher than
the 16th Lok Sabha but still well behind neighbouring Pakistan and Bangladesh. There were
8,000-plus candidates that contested this Lok Sabha election, of which around 700-plus were
women. Out of 542 MPs in the 17th Lok Sabha, 78 are women, a slight increase from the 2014
polls where 62 women parliamentarians were elected. Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal have
elected the highest number of women MPs with 11 candidates each. These states include
prominent women leaders like Bahujan Samaj Party’s chief Mayawati and West Bengal’s chief
minister Mamata Banerjee. UP and Bengal are followed by eight women MPs in Maharashtra,
seven in Odisha and six in Gujarat. Out of the total 29 states, women MPs were elected from
22, leaving seven states of Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir,
Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Sikkim. with no female representation in the Parliament.
The 17th Lok Sabha will have the highest number of women candidates since 1952.

17. Decline in value based politics: the motive of politics and politicians has undergone a
massive change from leaders thinking about human welfare after independence to Politicians
whose sole motive is to grab and sustain power by all means like money power, muscle power,
unprincipled alliances, mud -slinging at each other etc.

18. Dynastic politics: the last more than 70 years of India’s political history saw the origin and
growth of dynastic politics both at the centre and state level. While the BJP may lampoon the
Congress for dynastic politics, a study by researchers at Harvard University and University of
Mannheim shows that the BJP too is not that different. If the Congress had 36 dynastic MPs in
the Lok Sabha since 1999, the BJP had 31, says the study.

In the elections to the 17th Lok Sabha too, two or more immediate members of a family were
in the electoral fray in a number of instances. In Karnataka, it is former PM HD Deve Gowda
and his two grandsons, while in Bihar, two brothers and the son of union minister Ram Vilas
Paswan were contesting. But not all such contests are about family unity — in Araku, TDP’s
V Kishore Chandra Deo faced electoral challenge from his own daughter. But the results of the
Lok Sabha elections have all but left most political dynasties battered and mauled. From Rahul
Gandhi in Amethi to Jyotiraditya Scindia in Guna, voters in the recently concluded general
elections seem to have decimated the handful of families that called the shots in India's politics
India Today's Data Intelligence Unit (DIU) zeroed in on 51 leaders coming from politically
powerful families and found that most dynasts who lost the elections this time belonged to the
Opposition. 23 won the elections this time - most from BJP.