What Amit Shah gets wrong about multiparty democracy

Did multiparty democracy disappoint India by foisting weak and indecisive coalition governments at the Centre?

Home minister Amit Shah, possibly the most influential minister in the Narendra Modi government, seems to think so. If Shah is to be believed, the policy paralysis in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) years owed to multiple power centers pulling in different directions and so scarred the electorate that it has plumbed for majority governments twice now.

Shah is not off the mark about the popular disenchantment that crept in during the UPA years, particularly the UPA-II years, but his placing blame on multi-party democracy is problematic.

In some quarters, Shah’s statement can be – and is being – read as justification for a majority government such as his own. More importantly, it will be seen as an indictment of smaller parties as corrupt, power-hungry formations not above arm-twisting their own coalition governments – even when aware that their petty and extractive stances could render the government ineffective. Notably, this negative portrayal of smaller parties comes at a time when regional parties have emerged as the principal challenge to the expansion plans of Shah’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Not a simple binary

Are multiparty democracies inherently, structurally constrained in delivering development and economic momentum and more prone to corruption? The answer has to be no. France, Germany, and the Scandinavian countries, among the world’s most developed nations and boasting flattering human development indices, are all multiparty democracies. Some of the best years of economic growth in India have come when coalition governments were at the helm. And, not to forget, the current economic slowdown in the country, is unfolding at a time when we have a two-term majority government for the first time in decades.

Scandal and high corruption are not unique to multi-party democracies either. If multiparty Italy has seen it, so have two-party dominated systems (where majority governments are more common) such as the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

If the argument is that coalition governments in multi-party democracies are vulnerable to pulls and pressures from various quarters, that is debatable too. For instance, in the USA, where the winner-takes-all election rules have routinely ensured majority governments, the government indulges in a range of interest groups, including climate change skeptics, religious fundamentalists, race supremacists, and big business. The un-elected status of these players should not delude anyone about their role in influencing election outcomes or the clout they enjoy in the circles that matter.

The Indian experience with majority governments has been no different. The BJP itself has been critical of majority Congress governments of the past for pandering to religious minorities and select caste groups, emboldening liberal voices to the extent of encouraging treason, and favoring certain businesses – compromising, in the process, national interest and the pace of development. Now, similar charges of preferential treatment to certain (other) constituencies, classes, and business groups are being laid at the door of the BJP’s majority government.

Another (valid) area of criticism that has come back to haunt the BJP relates to how Congress majority governments led to centralisation of power and ill-considered decisions, progressively sabotaged India’s federal structure, and eroded her public institutions.

Whichever side of the political divide we stand on, it is difficult to argue then that majority governments, by virtue of just being majority governments, can be trusted to exercise their power fairly and responsibly and in a manner consistent with the principles enshrined in the Constitution. If anything, they have revealed themselves capable of gross abuse of power.

The power of many

While there is little to suggest that a majority government is better placed than a coalition government to deliver clean, inclusive, responsive governance, there is one area where multi-party democracies score: They afford choices to voters, offer space for alternate opinions and formulations to be articulated.

Two-party systems generally encourage dominant players to focus on consolidating the largest voting bloc(s) and cultivating its loyalties. As a result, party positions – shades of rhetoric and policy fine print notwithstanding – begin converging. The typically neoliberal stances of parties on issues such as public health, education, policing, the environment, and the economy have been lamented often in various two-party set-ups.

In India, a multi-party democracy but with two-party systems in several large states, this convergence tendency is reflected in the consistency between the economic agendas the BJP and the Congress pursue in states they dominate (or while in power at the Center) and, more recently, their flashing of the Hindutva cards. The BJP may be a few degrees less coy about Hindutva, but that both parties see opportunities for cementing voting blocs through it is quite apparent.

The two-party system thus presents the risk of sidelining minority opinion (not to be conflated with minority groups though they end up being marginalised too, a case in point being the dwindling numbers of Muslim candidates fielded in elections and finding place in elected bodies). It may limit people’s options to parties imitating each other, and a polity less tuned to explore meaningful, out-of-the-box solutions to pressing day-to-day issues. And it is here that other parties bring value to the policy discourse and development praxis.

It has taken the Aam Aadmi Party to introduce a new vocabulary and set of ideas for Delhi. The post-1990s economic agenda would have accommodated far fewer safety nets and been even more oblivious to the interests of farmers, small businesses, Dalits, and adivasis if not for the pressures brought by the Left and regional parties.

Mandal parties opened political space for Dalits and have changed caste equations in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The (semblance of) debate on the National Register of Citizens and the government’s recent manoeuvers in Jammu & Kashmir has stemmed from the stances of parties such as the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Trinamool, and the Janata Dal (United). Linguistic diversity and nurture of cultural particularities are other causes regional parties have effectively championed.

This is not to suggest that a multiparty democracy works perfectly – apathy and corruption can, and does, exist in them too, and their potential for shaping an alternative development paradigm has not exactly been fulfilled in India – but to underscore its capacity to accommodate multiple voices and realities. That is not something to be under-estimated, indeed is something to be celebrated, in a nation as diverse as ours.

The solution to addressing governance challenges lies not in truncating the player field but in strengthening and respecting mechanisms of public accountability (elections are just one of them) and systems for institutional checks and balances. It is here that India’s governance systems have disappointed, and it is here that their revitalisation must begin.

(Manish Dubey is a policy analyst and writer)

The views expressed above are the author’s own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.