The working of parties over the past 50 years or more can be described as one of partial success. Parties played an immense role as mediating agencies in bringing about democratic transformation in a relatively peaceful manner (compared to several other former colonial countries), in a short span of time, and under conditions that were considered not very conducive to democratic development. They were instrumental in taking governments closer to the people. Today, all parties contest elections in the name of securing the common good. They maintain that they are committed to protect and promote the interests of the poor, marginalized and the socially disadvantaged.

Parties have exhibited a good deal of ideological flexibility. This has been the strength as well as the weakness of parties. All parties profess adherence to some kind of egalitarian, secular, socialist and democratic principles, although the meaning of these terms vary from party to party. Parties that start with some strong ideological moorings tend to moderate themselves and move towards the centre. Although the leaders and groups who split away from a parent party often proclaim ideological differences and policy disagreements as reasons for parting ways or forming new parties, it is difficult to disentangle them from motivations arising from power calculations and personality clashes.

The representative character of parties also has increased over time. They draw more and more sections of society into the arena of politics and provided avenues for the elites from the weaker sections to manage public affairs, through a process that came to be known as ‘social-balancing’. Where and when this accommodation did not keep pace with the pressures, from different social groups, for leadership positions in party and government, new parties have emerged claiming to represent the aspirations of the weaker sections, backward classes, people of specific nationalities, etc. They came to power at the Union and State levels. Secularisation and broad basing of parties, as well as fragmentation of parties, have occurred simultaneously. As different social groups, either through the catch-all parties or through parties of specific castes and communities, get a place in governments, the legitimacy of governments has increased over time.

While the success of parties gives us some satisfaction, their shortcomings cause disquiet. The very success of parties in establishing and working out democracy in the spirit of nationalism, secularism, and socialism gave birth to tensions that parties find difficult to manage or resolve. For some desire more democracy, more power and more benefits from the state. Others feel that Indian democracy has gone awry and they tend to blame it on the populism, paternalism, corruption, and criminality indulged in by party leaders. The latter argument became more strident, as the principles and practice of libertarian democracy became dominant in the changed international environment of globalisation.

Most parties have become centred around one leader who exercises absolute control over the party. The puzzle is that while parties have been instrumental in democratising state and society, they have tended to become internally less democratic. As the capacity of the state to meet these aspirations turned out to be limited and the leaders were excessively interested in perpetuating themselves in power endlessly and in amassing wealth by making use of their position, it became difficult for the parties to manage public affairs. Representative bodies have become arenas of confrontational politics, where rivals launch personal attacks on each other than deliberating upon policies and legislation. Ruling parties are repeatedly voted out in elections due to the anti-incumbency factor. As popular pressures have increased on the parties, the party leaders have found out ways to win elections by resorting to huge expenditure to secure votes, the use of coercion, and the playing up of caste and community identities.

Political parties in India today have to simultaneously attend multiple tasks: to resolve the emergent tensions emanating in society due to rapid democratisation; to manage policy changes in the environment of liberalisation without giving up the Constitutional commitment equality and justice; to forge coalitions and learn to share power; and to reform themselves. Actually, all these tasks are organically connected. So the parties find themselves under great pressure to perform by the delivery of the democratic promise to the people at large and to reform internally by ensuring more democracy within parties.

The need for party reforms is now widely felt in India, including by some of the leaders of different parties. Introspection among party leaders and their willingness to set things right within the party, the ability of people to bring pressure on parties and to choose right leaders, initiatives from the EC and the judiciary, and external legislation that ensures internal democracy in parties are crucial to making both parties and Indian democracy strong and vibrant.