Do you agree that since 2014 we see a new phase of the Indian Party System?

The sixteenth Lok Sabha elections had, no doubt brought a massive debate among political
scientists and political analysts on whether India has entered a new phase in the party
system. After three decades, the Bhartiya Janata Party or BJP led by their leader Narendra
Modi won a single majority in the lower house of the parliament in 2014. The BJP alone won
282 seats out of 543 seats; this was 166 seats more than in the previous general elections.

This general election result of 2014 left analysts wondering if India would be entering a
fourth phase in the Indian political party system, leaving the era of coalition behind. Many
analysts were skeptical stating that it was still early to assume and conclude that India has
entered a new BJP-dominated phase. However, others undoubtedly believed India had
moved into a new dominant party system similar to the one that Congress once played.

Then in 2019, the BJP once again swept the polls by winning 303 out of 543 seats in the
Lower House. This outcome was shocking for many political scientists and analysts as the
BJP was facing a massive amount of criticism for their failed policies, nationwide farmers’
protest and the loss of power in many state-level elections. On top of this, the Indian
economy was faltering. However, the results made it apparent that India was entering a
new ‘second dominant party system’.

PHASES of INDIA’s POLITICAL PARTY SYSTEM.

The electoral history of India – from the first post-independence general election in 1952 to
the 2014 Lok Sabha elections – can be roughly divided into three phases. Studying these
phases would give a better understanding of the electoral system in India. According to
Yadav, a new electoral system commences when an observer can ‘detect a destabilization of
(an old system) and its replacement by a new pattern of electoral outcomes as well as its
determinants.’

1952 – 1967: Congress Dominance Era

After the independence, the Indian National Congress had been the most popular all India
party. In the first four general elections, the Congress had won a clear majority of seats in
the Parliament. The party enjoyed this position till 1967. Rajni Kothari had described the
system in this period (1952-1967) as the ‘Congress System’. The Congress was such a
dominant force that it secured an absolute majority in almost all elections in the Lok Sabha
and State Assemblies in 1952, 1957 and 1962. The first three general elections saw Congress
domination in the system that was marked by a multiparty system vs one dominant party in
the country. This trend had changed after the fourth General election, Nehru’s demise and
split in the party had affected the Congress dominance in the party system. Even though the
Congress was the single dominant party at the centre and in most states, it faced
competition from non-Congress parties in several states.
1967 – 1989: Breakdown of Congress System and Emergence of the Non-Congress Parties

After the 1967 elections, there was a change in the Indian political system. This change was
indicated by the decline of Congress party dominance in Lok Sabha elections and assembly
elections, and the emergence of regional parties and leaders in several states. Even though
the Congress’s power remained firm in New Delhi, its grip on the state capitals began to
decline. The regional parties and leaders challenged the Congress and represented the
different aspirations and interests of different groups and regions. Subsequently, since the
late 1980s, the Congress failed to generate a popular leadership capable of accommodating
varied interests. In the following decades, while the BJP emerged as the most dominant
political party in India, the Congress needed allies to retain its influence. With this, there
was a long process of formation of coalition governments in India.

1989 – 2014: Rise of Coalition Politics and How the BJP Gained Ground Amid a Fragmented
Party System

In 1989, there was a hung house in the Lok Sabha for the first time with no party getting a
majority. Consequently, the Janata Dal formed the National Front government with outside
support from BJP and the left parties. This was how the political party system entered the
third phase, the era of coalition politics. The competition shifted from a rivalry between
national parties into a rivalry between alliances and coalitions of national and state parties.
Political parties made alliances and in 1996, 13 non-BJP parties formed an alliance known as
the United Front. Likewise, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by BJP was formed
in 1999. The Governments formed in 1989, 1990, 1991, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2004 and 2009
consisted of several parties. However, there emerged predominantly two poled-alliance of
political parties which formed governments at the centre and in states from 2004. One of
the alliances was known as the United Front Alliance (UPA) and was led by Congress, and
another was led by the BJP known as National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

After the Congress victory in 1984, there were two main issues that factored prominently in
shaping the contours of emerging politics in northern India. The first was the Shah Bano
controversy. This opened up a political debate about whether India should adopt a uniform
civil code that would apply to all religious groups. The second issue was the mobilization of
Hindu voters dedicated to building a Ram temple in Ayodhya on the site of the Babri
Mosque. These two issues later became a unique chance for the BJP to consolidate votes.

Subsequently, in 1989, due to these two issues and charges of pervasive corruption against
the Congress government, the National Front formed the government. This greatly paved
the way for the BJP and gave a promising opportunity to consolidate its electoral position.

The issue of reservations for historically marginalised castes was also another prominent
issue. The Mandal Commission, a government task force that recommended that OBCs be
given access to quotas governing higher education seats and civil service posts, was
accepted by the then Prime Minister. This prompted the BJP leader L.K. Advani to take to
the road to undercut the fallout from the issue of OBC reservations and create Hindu
pressure to construct a Ram temple on the site of the Babri Masjid. When Advani was
arrested in Bihar during the Yatra, the BJP withdrew support from the government, which
eventually paved the way for the 1991 general elections.

With this, the BJP “represented the twin constituencies of political Hindutva (or Hindu
nationalism) and anti-Congress. The BJP tried to mobilize voters through economic statism
but the 1991 Congress economic reforms limited their ability. However, the party still
gained popularity through the Ram temple agitation and opposition to the demand for
Muslim reservations. The party’s rank and file also became more accommodating of
historically marginalized groups—including Dalits, Scheduled Tribes (STs), and OBCs.

In 1998, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) secured a majority and formed a
government. Then the 1999 elections conducted in the aftermath of the India- Pakistan
military conflict in Kargil helped the NDA to return to power once more.

In spite of the popularity and immense satisfaction of the people with the NDA, the coalition
lost the 2004 elections. Instead, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), formed
the government till 2014. However, despite fumbling in the 2004 and 2009 nationwide
elections, the BJP kept making electoral gains beyond its traditional strongholds in northern
and western India.

BEYOND INDIA’s THIRD-PARTY SYSTEM

To have a clearer answer to whether India has entered a new phase in the Indian Party
system, I believe that analysing the third-party system is the best way to find out. I believe
that there is a new phase when one can detect the old phase destabilised, as stated by
Yadav.

Principles of the Third Party System

The main principles of the Third Party System can be concluded – i) There was an absence of
a central pole in national politics between 1989 and 2009; ii)it was an era of political
fragmentation; iii)the electoral contests became more competitive on nearly every
dimension; iv)the political system became highly federalised; v) voter turnout surged at the
state level while national political mobilization cooled; vi) there was a change in the social
composition of the representative class For instance, in the northern Hindi belt states, the
combined share of OBC and SC legislators replaced that of upper caste and intermediate
castes for the very first time.

There was a discontinuity of all the six principles of the third phase in the 2014 and 2019
general elections.
From Multipolarity to Unipolarity

From 1952 to 1989, the Congress fulfilled the role of a hegemon. Though there was a sharp
decline in their position after 1967, their hold on national politics was more or less intact.
The Congress’s vote share drastically dipped from 45.8 per cent in the first electoral system
to 13.6 between 1989 and 2009. Likewise, the BJP’s vote share peaked in 1998 at 25.6 per
cent and subsequently experienced a secular decline. In the 2009 general election, the BJP
won 18.8 per cent of the vote share and had their second consecutive defeat at the hands of
the Congress.

However, the 2014 and 2019 general elections brought a great change. In 2014, the BJP won
283 out of 543 seats and its NDA coalition partners won 53 seats. The Congress on the other
hand won only 44 seats. This outcome was historic on several accounts. Firstly, the BJP won
India’s first single-party majority in the lower house since 1984. Second, it was the first time
after the independence that a party other the Congress won a majority. Third, even though
the BJP won a majority of seats off of just 31 per cent of the vote, it exceeded its previous
best performance (25.6 per cent). Furthermore, its allies brought the NDA’s combined vote
share to 38.5 per cent.

Then came the 2019 elections and many analysts doubted that the BJP would be able to
replicate the 2014 outcome. There were four main reasons. First, the BJP’s victory was
fueled only by a limited number of states. The analysts believed that the BJP would have to
win again in these several limited states to match the 2014 elections. Given the forces of
anti-incumbency present in Indian politics, a repeat of the same magnitude seemed
impossible.

Secondly, in 2013 and 2014, Modi relentlessly campaigned on a pledge to usher acche din
for the Indian economy by generating rapid economic growth, creating millions of jobs, and
revitalizing India’s moribund investment cycle. However, a large part of this did not
materialize during Modi’s first term in office.

Third, there were signs that the opposition parties had minimized, though by no means fully
resolved, their coordination dilemmas. In 2019, unlike in 2014 (where the opposition chose
to fight the BJP on their own), the opposition adopted a strategy of cooperation to bring the
BJP down.

Nevertheless, these shifting dynamics did nothing to hold back the BJP. In the 2019
elections, the BJP won 303 seats which surpasses their previous win. There was a rise in
BJP’s vote share in many states across the country.

The most interesting aspect of the BJP’s win was how the party made inroads into eastern
India. Traditionally, the BJP has been seen as a party of Hindi-speaking northerners, a
classification that puts it at odds with India’s eastern corridor, where politics revolves
around subnational mobilization driven by powerful linguistic and cultural identities. In the
2019 elections, the BJP opened its account in the southern state of Telangana by winning 4
seats—an outcome few election analysts had foretold. The BJP not only gained votes
geographically but the party also increased its support from nearly all Hindu caste groups.
From upper castes to OBCs to Dalits and tribals, the BJP’s vote share grew from its 2014
level. The BJP also performed well in the rural areas as compared to in 2019. Due to the
BJP’s outstanding performance, the 2019 general elections saw the highest share of
incumbents win re-election.

Reduction in Political Fragmentation

There was a surge of electoral fragmentation in the third phase. In the 1984 general
elections, only thirty-eight parties contested elections, and then 117 more parties entered
the fray in the next five years. There were two reasons behind this - i) regional and caste-
based parties multiplied in proportion to the degree of popular disenchantment with the
Congress Party ii) As coalition government became the norm in New Delhi, political
entrepreneurs had every reason to go and start new political parties. In 2009, parliamentary
elections were contested by candidates from 370 political parties.

In India today, political fragmentation seems to be as strong as ever. For two decades, the
number of parties represented in the Parliament has remained in the upper thirties.
However, merely adding the number of parties does not give an accurate representation.
Therefore, in order to have a more accurate measure, political scientists prefer to calculate
the effective number of parties, which essentially weighs parties by the number of votes (or
seats) they actually earned. This statistic depicts a very different picture of the political
fragmentation story. Now if we begin first with the effective number of parties (ENP) based
on the votes parties actually won in the general election. Before 1989, the ENP never
broached 5.0. Then, during the coalition era from 1996 to 2009, the values went up to 6.7
and 7.6. In 2014, the ENP dropped to 6.9 and then in 2019, the concentration of votes went
up and the value became 5.4.

This one summary statistic shows how different the last two Lok Sabha elections have been
in comparison to the coalition era. It shows how the BJP’s dominance in 2014 and 2019
means that smaller, regional parties are losing ground to a domineering hegemonic force in
the form of the BJP.

Weaker Political Competition

Political competition has grown significantly over the past elections. One way you could
measure the competition is to look at the average margin of victory which is the difference
in the vote share between the winner and the immediate runner-up. In the first two
phases, there was notably less competition. However, after 1977 margins steadily came
down over a period of several decades. The average margin of victory sunk down to the
lowest in 2009 with just 9.7 per cent.

Nevertheless, this took a huge turn in 2014. In the 2014 elections, the average margin grew
to 15.2; the highest since the first year of the coalition era. The margins grew even further in
2019 to 17.3 per cent. This overall average conceals a lot of diversity between electoral
contests. For example, in seats the BJP won, the margin was a stunning 20.2 per cent
compared to just 11.0 per cent in seats where the BJP was the runner-up and 14.9 per cent
in places where the BJP was not one of the top two finishers.

Weakening Federalization of National Elections

In the third phase of the political system, general election outcomes often become
“derivative” of the state-level verdict. This interaction between the state and national
politics had several components. To begin with, nationwide political conflict in each state
reflected the dynamics of that state's politics. Second, state-level political calendars often
influenced national elections. Third, political participation in the Lok Sabha elections largely
resembled that of state-level elections. Fourth, the performance at the state level was a
significant influencer of voter behaviour in the national elections.

Some of these dynamics, though not all, have changed from the 2014 elections.

In the third-party system, if a national election is held in the first or second year of a state
government’s tenure, the ruling party in the state has a greater probability of performing
well when that state votes. However, after the 2nd year, the incumbency becomes a liability.

As a result, many analysts had expected the Congress Party to do well in the states of
Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan in the 2019 general election. Just earlier in
December 2018, the Congress Party had just won the state elections in which the BJP had
been an incumbent party. In every case (2003–2004, 2008–2009, and 2013–2014), the party
that won the most vote and seat share in the state assembly elections also won the national
elections.

Even so, this was not the case in the 2019 general election, this correlation broke down
completely. The Congress actually saw its vote and seat share in the general election crash
after winning the December 2018 polls. The party’s vote share declined by an average of 4.5
per cent across the three states, while its seat share fell a striking 51 per cent on average.
These data have shown that the state and national verdicts have become partially divided.

Another important change in the 2014 and 2019 elections is that Modi has managed to
presidentialize a parliamentary election by making the election principally a vote on his
leadership. Here, there was no opposition party with a leader that could go face to face with
Modi. When campaigning, Modi was explicit in rallying supporters with the plea that a vote
for the BJP is a vote for Modi, irrespective of whose name actually appears as the local
candidate on the ballot.

Lastly, there was a change in the balance of power between the regional and national
parties. Between 1996 and 2014, voters in India have been evenly divided between the two
big national parties—the Congress and BJP—and other regional parties. In 2009, the
regional parties' vote share peaked at 52.6 per cent however dipped to 43 per cent in 2019.
Heightened Voter Mobilization in National Elections

In the third phase, voter turnout was not very high; turnout stagnated somewhat in the
2004 and 2009 elections. Then in 2014, there was a clear break in voter turnout, when India
recorded its highest turnout, at 66.4 per cent. This degree of voter mobilization was
undoubtedly a reflection of two factors; the public was frustrated with the UPA and the
excitement around the candidacy of Narendra Modi. There is also a narrowing of the gap
between the national and state turnout in 2014 and 2019 as compared to the coalition era.
The voter turnout of women has also increased in the past two elections.

Caste and Social Composition

Caste in Indian politics has been an ever-present reality. Even so, the way caste has been
mobilised and expressed politically has not been constant. According to Yadav, the most
salient social category for politics was jati (one of the thousands of discrete caste groups
that reside within the umbrella categories of upper caste, OBC, SC, and so on).

In the first-party system, jati was deeply embedded within a specific local context. In the
second party system, jati-level identities retained their importance, but due to changes in
the political environment, political parties worked to build state-wide alliances of individual
jatis in order to construct a minimum winning coalition. In the third-party system, jatis lost
their prominence as the debate shifted to the umbrella-like varna groupings in the
aftermath of the Mandal Commission report and its aftermath.

These larger umbrella organisations comprised of numerous jatis appear to have lost their
significance in the fourth-party system. Politics has shifted back to the formation of jati-level
alliances. One of the BJP’s biggest victories in many north Indian states, including Uttar
Pradesh, has been to undermine the larger caste categories in an effort to create a wedge
between dominant jatis and subordinate groupings.

The social composition of India’s elected representatives has also shifted. In 1989, 47 per
cent of MPs from Hindi-speaking states were from the upper and intermediate castes,
compared to 39 per cent from the OBC and SC groupings. This gap narrowed with time and
eventually, in 1999, the latter overtook the former. This trend, however, reversed in 2009
and has continued since then.

The Base of the BJP’s Power

Other than mining data, other factors are important to study to shape the BJP's current
hegemony and underpin the fourth party system.

System Defining Party

BJP is a system–defining party. In the second-party system, the Congress featured as a
dominant power and during this a nationwide wave of vehement support or vehement
opposition to the Congress was common. Likewise, after 2014, major parties contesting the
elections positioned themselves as either supportive of Modi and the BJP or vehemently
opposed to them. There were state-specific alliances specifically constructed on an anti-BJP
platform. Though the oppositions failed, the political formations on display were largely in
reaction to the BJP’s own standing. This makes the BJP a system-defining party.

Ideology Hegemony

As defined by Palshikar, hegemony has two components: ideology and electoral

performance. The electoral performance as discussed has been great and the party has also
managed to exert its dominance ideologically.

In the 2014 and 2019 elections, the party deployed Hindutva (Hindu Nationalism) in specific
places that they believed would help them strengthen their political base. The BJP over the
decades has worked hard to expand its demographic base to include Dalits, OBCs and so on.
It has done so through issues like the Ram temple agitation, cow protection and illegal
immigration to transcend caste divisions among Hindus.

The BJP under Modi has managed to dominate the discourse on the economy and economic
development. The BJP’s posture has been based on three ideas: i)the Modi government is
pro-business, especially with regards to indigenous Indian business. He has also linked this
unshackling of Indian business to India’s prestige abroad; ii)Modi has branded himself as the
ultimate anti-corruption leader; iii)Modi has refashioned himself, especially with regard to
indigenous Indian business. He has also skillfully linked this unshackling of Indian business to
India’s prestige abroad.

Organisational and Financial Prowess

The BJP was able to project Modi as their leader with unimpeachable credentials through a
political machine that was ahead of the competition in terms of organisational foundations
and material resources. Amit Shah, the president of the BJP established a party machine
down to the level of the panna pramukh which literally is a party worker in charge of an
individual panna (page) of the voter roll attached to a neighbourhood polling station.

Furthermore, the BJP has successfully harnessed digital technology to build cohesion among
its voters and workers and has a financial advantage.

Charismatic Leadership
It is highly debatable that the 2014 and 2019 elections were Modi’s victory rather than the
BJP’s. In the 2014 elections, the incumbent Congress lacked leadership; it is easy to
understand that the charismatic, strong opposition leader in Modi took India by storm. In
the 2019 elections, though the BJP made many policy errors associated with the
demonetization and the poor implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), Modi
still remained highly popular.

CONCLUSION

To answer the question of whether there is a new phase in the Indian Party System since
2014, I believe that there is. With all the data I’ve gathered, it is only logical to assume that
India has entered a new dominant party system.

There is a great difference between the coalition era and the party system after 2014. The
rise of the BJP and Modi has no doubt changed the political system. I believe that the BJP
still has a high chance of winning even in the next elections mainly as there is no strong
opposition head. Though the Aam Aadmi Party has taken over Delhi and Punjab, I believe
that the party still has some way to go to overthrow the BJP from the Parliament.

V.Noelle Lalrinpuii - 930