Class 12 political chapter 5

          Challenges to and Restoration of the                              Congress system 

Challenge of political succession

• Prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru passed away in May 1964 .
• The 1960s were labelled as the 'dangerous decade ' when unresolved problems like poverty , inequality, communal and regional divisions etc. 

From Nehru to Shastri 

• The president of the congress party consulted party leaders congress members of parliament and found that there was a consensus in favour of lal Bahadur Shastri .
• He was unanimously chosen as the leader of the congress parliamentary party and thus became the country 's next prime minister .
• Shastri was the country's prime minister from 1964 to 1966 .
• During Shastri 's brief prime ministership , the country faced two more challenges .
• The country faced a war with pakistan in 1965 . 
• Shastri's famous slogan 'jai jawan jai kisan; symoblised the country's resolve to faced both these challenges .

From Shastri to Gandhi 

• The congress faced the challenge of political succession for the second time in two years .
• This time there was an intense competition between Morarji Desai and Indira Gandhi .
• This time the senior leaders in the party decided to back Indira Gandhi , but the decision was not unanimous .
• The contest was resolved through a secret ballot among congress Mps.
• Indra Gandhi defeated Morarji desai by securing the support of more than two - third of the party 's Mps .
• A year of becoming prime minister , Indra Gandhi had to lead the party in a Lok Sabha election 
• The economic situation in the country had further deteriorated , adding to her problems .

Fourth General Election , 1967 

The year 1967 is considered a landmark year in India 's political and electoral history .

Context of the elections 

• Two prime ministers had died in quick succession , and the new prime minister , who was being seen as a political novice , had been in office for less than a year .
• The economic situation triggered off price rise . 
• People started protesting against the increase in prices of essential commodities , food scarcity , growing unemployment and the overall economic condition in the country .
• Bandhs and hartals were called frequently across the country .
• The government saw the protests and not as expressions of people 's problems .
• The communist and socialist parties launched struggles for greater equality .
• The period also witnessed some of the worst Hindu - Muslim riots since Independence .

Non - congressism 

• Opposition parties were in the forefront of organising public protests and pressurising the government .
• They felt that the inexperience of Indira Gandhi and the internal factionalism within the congress provided them an opportunity to topple the congress.
• The socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia gave this strategy the name of ' non - congressism .
• Congress rule was undemocratic and opposed to the interests of ordinary poor people .
• The non- congress parties was necessary for reclaiming democracy for the people .

Electoral verdict 

• The congress did manage to get a majority in the Lok Sabha , but with its lowest tally of seats and share of votes since 1952 .
• Half the ministers in Indira Gandhi 's cabinet were defeated .
• The congress lost majority in as many as seven states .
• In two other states defections prevented it from forming a government .
• These nine states where the congress lost power were spread across the country - Punjab , Haryana , Uttar pardesh , Madhya pradesh , Bihar, West Bengal , Orissa , Madras and Kerala .
• This was the first time any non - congress party had secured a majority of its own in any state .

Coalitions -

• The election of 1967 brought into picture the phenomenon of coalitions . since no single party had got majority , various non - congress parties came together to from joint legislative parties that supported non - congress government .
• In most of these cases the coalition partners were ideologically incongruent .

Defection  

• Defection means an elected representative leaves the party on whose symbol he / she was elected and joins another party.
• After the 1967 general election , the breakaway congress legislators played an important role in installing non - congress governments in three states - Harayana , Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh .

Split in the Congress 

• Most non - Congress coalition governments in the States did not survive for long.
• They lost majority , and either new combinations were formed or President's rule had to be imposed .

Indira us . the 'Syndicate ' 

• The real challenge to Indira Gandhi came not from the opposition but from within her own party .
• She had to deal with the ' syndicate ', a group of powerful and influential leaders from within the congress .
• Indra Gandhi attempted to assert her position within the government and the party .She chose her trusted group of advisers from outside the party .

Indira Gandhi thus faced two challenges 

• She needed to build her independence from the syndicated .
• She also needed to work towards regaining the ground that the Congress had lost in the 1967 election .
• She converted a simple power struggle into an ideological struggle .
• She launched a series of initiatives to give the government policy a left orientation 
• She got the congress working committee to adopt a ten point programme in may 1967 .

Presidential election , 1969 

• The factional rivalry between the Syndicate and Indra Gandhi came in the open in 1969 .
• Mrs Gandhi 's reservations the syndicate managed to nominate her long time opponent and then speaker of the Lok sabha N. Sanjeeva Reddy , as the official congress candidate for the ensuring Presidential elections .
• Indira Gandhi retaliated by encouraging the then Vice - President , V.V. Giri , to file his nomimation as an independent  candidate .
• Congress had seen differences of this kind in the past . But this time both the Parties wanted a showdown which took place during the Presidential elections .
• The election ultimately resulted in the victory of V.V. Giri , the independent candidate , and the defeat of sanjeeva reddy , the official Congress candidate.
• The defeat of the official congress candidate formalised the split in the party .
• The congress president expelled the prime minister form the party ; she claimed that her group was the real congress .

The 1971 Election and Restoration of congress 

• The split in the congress reduced Indira Gandhi Government to a minority 
• Indira Gandhi 's government recommended the dissolution of the Lok Sabha in December 1970 .
• The fifth general election to Lok Sabha were held in February 1971.

The Contest 

• The electoral contest appeared to be loaded against congress .
• The new congress was just one faction of an already weak party 
• Non - congress opposition parties formed an electoral alliance known as the Grand Alliance.
• The new congress had something that its big opponents lacked - it had an issue, an agenda and a positive slogan .
• The slogan of garibi hatao and the programmes that followed it were part of Indra Gandhi 's political strategy of building an independent nationwide political support base .

The Outcome and after 

• The result of the Lok Sabha elections of 1971 , were as dramatic as was the decision to hold these election 
• The congress CPI alliance won more seats and votes than the Congress had ever won in the first four general elections .
• The Grand Alliance of the opposition proved a grand failure . There combined tally of seats was less than 40 .
• After the 1971 Lok Sabha elections, a major political and military crisis broke out in East Pakistan 
• The State Assembly election held in 1972 .
• With two successive election victories , one at the centre and other at the State level , the dominance of the congress was restored .

Restoration 

• It relied entirely on the popularity of the supreme leader .
• It had a somewhat weak organisational structure .
• This congress party now did not have many factions , thus it could not accommodate all kinds of opinions and interests .