HEADING FOR A TWO-PARTY SYSTEM?

WHILE ideologies unite, individuals divide. In the sprawling arena of Indian democracy, where more than 500 parties national, regional, state-level and even unrecognised compete for the mandate to govern a nation of 1.5 billion, a stark truth is emerging.

- PRABHU CHAWLA

WHILE ideologies unite, individuals divide. In the sprawling arena of Indian democracy, where more than 500 parties national, regional, state-level and even unrecognised compete for the mandate to govern a nation of 1.5 billion, a stark truth is emerging. Ideologies can bind disparate groups into coherent movements. Personalities, however, often fracture them when their aura fades. Across the country, once-mighty regional outfits built around a single leader’s charisma, caste arithmetic or linguistic pride are unravelling with surprising speed. The glue that held them together was never abstract doctrine but the promise of proximity to power, and that promise is proving perishable.

Take West Bengal’s Trinamool Congress. Mamata Banerjee carved it out of the Congress in 1998, infusing it with a potent mix of anti-Left populism, Bengali cultural assertion and personalised welfare. For two decades, it functioned less as a party and more as an extension of one woman’s will. When electoral reverses struck, the collapse was swift. Within hours, the edifice revealed itself as a patronage network rather than an ideological home. Legislators who had sworn loyalty to ‘Didi’ discovered that loyalty had always been transactional. Without the assured return to power and the accompanying lifestyle, the flock scattered. It was not the defeat of an idea but the exposure of an individual’s diminished capacity to deliver.