Broker Autonomy and the End of Indian National Congress Party Dominance

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul D. Kenny
Keyword(s):  
State Level ◽  
The State ◽  
Central Control ◽  
Economic Decline ◽  
Congress Party ◽  
National Congress ◽  
Party Dominance ◽  
Indian National Congress

This chapter examines how India’s patronage-based system became unstable, connecting the increase in broker autonomy that followed Nehru’s death in 1964 to a shift in partisan control away from the Congress at the subnational level. The increase in broker autonomy following Nehru’s death was subtle but highly significant. With the separation of the dual government and party authority that had allowed Nehru to arbitrate between competing factions at the state level, Congress factions could compete more openly and prosper as distinct parties, resulting in the fragmentation of the patronage network between center and periphery. This left the Congress party in control at the center but in opposition in several of India’s most populous states. The chapter argues that the crisis of the Congress system was driven by the de facto removal of central control over the subnational units of the party that followed Nehru’s death rather than economic decline.

Sachin Pilot

2020 ◽  
pp. 245-256
Author(s):  
Pradeep Chhibber ◽  
Harsh Shah
Keyword(s):  
Significant Role ◽  
State Level ◽  
The State ◽  
Party Leader ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Congress Party ◽  
The People ◽  
Chief Minister

Sachin Pilot, a senior Congress politician, is the son of Rajesh Pilot who was also a Congress Party leader. Sachin has been a two-time MP, a union cabinet minister, an MLA, the state president of the Congress party, and now, the deputy chief minister of Rajasthan. Pilot played a significant role in building the Congress party’s organization in Rajasthan from the ground up. He started from the very bottom, focusing on the panchayat, zila parishad, and even dairy elections, and then working his way to state-level elections. Politics for him is not a profession. It is a way of life. It’s a 24/7 commitment to being with the people and the party.

When the Central Player Fails: Constraints on Cabinet Formation in Contemporary India

2004 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 395-418 ◽  
Author(s):  
Csaba Nikolenyi
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
National Election ◽  
Parliamentary Election ◽  
National Party ◽  
Dominant Position ◽  
Congress Party ◽  
General Elections ◽  
National Congress ◽  
The One ◽  
Indian National Congress

From the first post–independence election in 1952 until the general elections of 1989, the Indian National Congress party won a plurality of the votes and a majority of the legislative seats in every national parliamentary election except for the one that was held in 1977. Although the party maintained its dominant position in the national party system for almost four decades, starting in 1967 it gradually lost it at the subnational level. Finally, the 1989 national election brought Congress dominance to a definite end in the national party system as well. Since 1989, Congress has neither remained the consistently strongest electoral party nor has it won a parliamentary majority in any single election.

The Critical Forties I

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Udayon Misra
Keyword(s):  
Central Place ◽  
The State ◽  
Line System ◽  
Tribal Populations ◽  
National Congress ◽  
Legislative Assembly ◽  
Indian National Congress

In the 1940s, the issues of immigration, land, and identity gained an urgency that had never been witnessed before. Under the different ministries led by Syed Muhammad Saadulla, immigration of Muslim peasants from East Bengal received a new impetus from the 1930s onwards, and the issue of land became a contentious one. Following the All India Muslim League’s Lahore Resolution of 1940, the issue of immigration acquired grave political overtones and became inextricably linked with the question of land and the identity of the indigenous Assamese and tribal populations. The details from the Assam Legislative Assembly debates reveal the diametrically opposite positions held by the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League on immigration, land, and identity. During this time the question of identity came to occupy a central place, and an attempt to do away with administrative measures such as the Line System created a highly explosive situation in the state.

Vetoes and Venues: Economic Crisis and the Roads to Recovery in Michigan and Ontario

2014 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 827-853 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Constantelos
Keyword(s):  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Fiscal Decentralization ◽  
State Level ◽  
The State ◽  
Divided Government ◽  
Economic Decline ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
International Border ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThis article examines executive responses to economic decline in Ontario and Michigan from 2003 to 2012, when the two governments struggled to adjust to a severe manufacturing crisis which greatly worsened during the Great Recession in 2008–2009. Sharing an international border, these cases offer control over an unusually large number of economic, social and political factors, permitting a focused analysis of the impact of divided government and fiscal decentralization on executive policy making. The research finds that greater fiscal decentralization in Canada and unified government in Ontario allowed the province to develop a more rapid and more robust response to the economic crisis in comparison to the State of Michigan. Budgetary constraints and a partisan veto at the state level forced Michigan's governor to redirect her efforts to the federal venue.

Counting Caste: Censuses, Politics, and Castelessness in India

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 455-484 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trina Vithayathil
Keyword(s):  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
Congress Party ◽  
The Face ◽  
National Congress ◽  
Indian National Congress

This article addresses the important question of how “upper”-caste power is reproduced in contemporary India, in the face of organized challenges from below. It argues that this process turns on the reproduction of castelessness. A long-standing site for the cultivation of castelessness has been the postcolonial census, which has limited the enumeration of caste to certain nonelites for the purposes of affirmative action reservations. However, in the aftermath of an intensive campaign to include a full castewise enumeration in Census 2011, the political leadership of the Indian National Congress Party conceded and reversed seventy years of census policy on caste. This article examines the institutional pushback within the executive bureaucracy in the year following the public concession to change census policy on caste. In doing so, it shows how bureaucratic actions and inactions reproduce both castelessness and upper-caste power in contemporary India.

Mecca between China and India

2021 ◽  
pp. 293-326
Author(s):  
Janice Hyeju Jeong
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Near East ◽  
Nationalist Party ◽  
China And India ◽  
Congress Party ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
National Congress ◽  
Indian National Congress

Through the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45) and the Nationalist–Communist War (1946–9), several Chinese Islamic pilgrimage delegations set out on their journeys across the Indian Ocean. Mecca was more than a simple endpoint destination. These travels encompassed transits and sojourns in cities in between Nanjing/Shanghai and Mecca, offering the pilgrim-cum-delegates venues of encounters with foreign dignitaries and diaspora populations. This chapter examines the published records and private diaries of members of the Chinese Islamic Goodwill Mission to the Near East (1937–9) who had been aligned with the Republican Nationalist Party, with a focus on their actions and rhetoric in Calcutta, Bombay, Karachi, and Lahore. Claims to anti-imperial Islamic solidarity and routes of the pilgrimage provided accessible channels for the Chinese Muslim delegates to conduct meetings with leaders of both the Muslim League and the Indian National Congress Party, while simultaneously attempting to garner support from Cantonese/Shandong diaspora populations and Turki refugees from the war-stricken Xinjiang Province. The practices and networks of informal diplomacy that consolidated in wartime would outlast the Second Sino-Japanese War itself.

The Congress Party Model: South Africa's African National Congress (ANC) and India's Indian National Congress (INC) as Dominant Parties

2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thiven Reddy
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Party System ◽  
African National Congress ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nationalist Movements ◽  
Dominant Party ◽  
Congress Party ◽  
Dominant Parties ◽  
National Congress ◽  
Indian National Congress

Abstract The paper argues that the model developed to analyze the dominance of the Indian National Congress of the political party system during the first two decades of independence helps in our understanding of the unfolding party system in South Africa. A comparison of the Congress Party and the African National Congress suggests many similarities. The paper is divided into three broad sections. The first part focuses on the dominant party system in India. In the second part, I apply the model of the Congress System to South Africa. I argue that the three features of the Congress System – a dominant party with mass based legitimacy, constituted by many factions and operating on the idiom of consensus-seeking internal politics, and sources of opposition who cooperate with factions in the dominant party to influence the political agenda – prevails in South Africa. In the third part, I draw on the comparison between the ANC and Congress Party to account for why certain nationalist movements become dominant parties. I emphasize that broad nationalist movements displaying high degrees of legitimacy and embracing democratic practices are adaptive to changing contexts and develop organizational mechanisms to manage internal party conflict. They contribute to the consolidation of democracy rather than undermine it.

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