Class 12 NCERT Political science Chapter -2

        Era of One - Party Dominance 

Challenge of building democracy 

• Faced with such serious challenges , leaders in many other countries of the world decided that their country could not afford to have democracy .
• They said that national unity was their first priority and that democracy will introduce differences and conflicts .
• Many of the countries that gained freedom  from colonialism experienced non- democratic rule .
• The conditions in India were not very different. But the leaders of the newly independent India decided to take the more difficult path.
• There are different groups with different and conflicting aspirations .
• The constitution was adopted on 26 November and signed on 24 January 1950 and it came into effect on 26 January 1950. 
• The election Commission of India was set up in January 1950. 
• Sukumar became the first Chief Election Commissioner. 
• Holding an election required delimitation or drawing the boundaries of the electoral constituencies .
• It also required preparing the electoral rolls, or the list of all the citizens eligible to vote .   
• The first general  election was also the first test of democracy in poor and illiterate country .
• The elections had to be postponed twice and finally held from October 1951 to February 1952 .
• This election referred to as the 1952 elections since most parts of the country voted in January 1952. 
• India's general election of 1952 became a landmark in the history of democracy all over the world . 

Congress dominance in the first three general elections 

• The results of the first general election did not surprise anyone .
• The India National Congress was expected to win this elections 
• In Jawaharlal Nehru , the party had the most popular and charismatic leader in Indian politics .He led the Congress campaign and toured through the country .
• The party won 364 of the 489 seats in the first Lok Sabha and finished way ahead of any other challenger .
• The communist Party of India that came next in terms of seats won only 16 seats .

• The state elections were held with the Lok Sabha elections .
• In the second and the third general elections , held in 1957 and 1962 respectively , the congress maintained the same position in the Lok Sabha by winning three - fourth of the seats .
• The Congress won three out of every four seats but it did not get even half of the votes .
• In FPTP system of election , that has been adopted in our country , the party that gets more votes than others tends to get much more than its proportional share .
• The votes of all the non - congress candidates it was more than the votes of the congress .
• The non - congress votes were divided between different rival parties and candidates . So the congress was still way ahead of the opposition and managed to win .

Socialist party 

• The congress socialist party (CSP) was formed within the congress in 1934 by a group of young leaders who wanted a more radical and egalitarian congress .
• In 1948, the congress amended its constitution to prevent its members from having a dual party membership .
• This forced the socialists to form a separate socialist party in 1948 .
• The socialists believed in the ideology of democratic socialism which distinguished them both form the congress as well as from the communists .
• Jayaprakash Narayan , Achyut Patwardhan , Asoka Mehta , Acharya Narendra Dev , Rammanohar Lohia and S.M. Joshi were among the leaders of the socialist parties .

Nature of congress dominance 

• The dominance of one party was ensured by compromising democracy .
• In China, Cuba and Syria the constitution permits only a single party to rule the country .
• In Myanmar , Belarus , Egypt, and Eritrea are effectively one - party states due to legal and military measures .
• Many parties contested elections in conditions in conditions of free and fair elections and yet the congress managed to win election after election .
• Congress was seen as inheritor of the national movement .
• Many leaders who were in the  forefront of that struggle were now contesting elections as congress candidates .
• Many parties were formed only around Independence or after that .Thus the congress had the 'first off the blocks' advantage.
• All these factors contributed to the dominance of the congress party .

Congress as social and ideological coalition 

• The congress began as a party dominated by the English speaking , upper caste , upper middle - class and urban elite .
• Gradually , its leadership also expanded beyond the upper caste and upper class professionals to agriculture based leaders with a rural orientation. 
• The congress transformed into a rainbow - like social coalition broadly representing India 's diversity in terms of classes and castes , religions and languages and various interests .
• The congress was a 'platform' for numerous groups , interests and even political parties to take part in the national movement .
• Most of the state units of the congress were made up of numerous factions .
• The functions took different ideological positions making the congress appear as a grand centrist party .

The community party of India 

• In early 1920s communist groups emerged in different parts of India taking inspiration from the Bolshevik revolution in Russia  and advocating socialism as the solution to problems affecting the country .
• In 1951 the communist party abandoned the path of violent revolution and decided to participate in the approaching general elections.
• A.K. Gopalan, S.A. Dange , E.M.S. Nambodiripad , P.C. Joshi , Ajay Ghosh and P. Sundarraya were among the notable leaders of the CPI.

 Emergency of opposition parties 

• India had a larger number of diverse and vibrant opposition parties than many other multi - party democracies .
• some of these had come into being even before the first general election of 1952 .
• some of these parties played an important part in the politics of the country in the ' sixties and ' seventies .
• All these opposition parties succeeded in gaining only a token representation in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies during this period .

Swatantra party 

•  Swatantra party was formed in August 1959 after the Nagpur resolution of the congress which called for land ceilings , take - over of food grain trade by the state and adoption of cooperative farming .
• The party was led by old congressmen like C. Rajagopalachari , K.M.Munshi , N.G. ranga and Minoo Masani .
• The Swatantra party wanted the government to be less and less involved in controlling the economy .
• It believed that prosperity could come only through individual freedom .
• The Swatantra Party was against land ceiling in agriculture , and opposed cooperative farming and state trading .