THE REPUBLICMoreover, the substantial peasantry which had been the beneficiary of
earlier British legislation and then also of Congress-sponsored zamindari
abolition, was politically powerful and constituted the social base not only
of the Congress but also of all other parties which tried to get a foothold in
the countryside. The political mobilisation of poor peasants holding tiny
plots of land or of landless labourers has so far hardly been attempted and
has never succeeded. The web of rural dependence and servitude is so
complex and tightly knit that it is difficult to unravel and poor people are
usually much too weak in every respect to put up much resistance. Well-
meaning reformers like Vinobha Bhave and his Bhoodan (land gift)
movement had not made much of an impact on the rural scene. Although
inaugurated with high hopes, Community Development has become just
another government department and its officers usually turn into petty
bureaucrats.
The spectrum of political partiesNehru grew impatient with the immobility of India’s rural society and talked
of a collective organisation of agriculture. The famous Avadi Resolution of
the National Congress of 1955 stated this goal and it seemed that the
Congress was bent upon a radical new programme so as to broaden its rural
base. Instead of doing this, however, it only frightened the substantial
peasants who had so far supported the Congress. C.Rajagopalachari, who
had been the first Indian governor general after Mountbatten’s departure
and before Rajendra Prasad was sworn in as India’s first president,
sponsored a new party, the Swatantra Party, which soon attracted the protest
vote of rich peasants disturbed by Nehru’s ideas. While Nehru had so far
directed his efforts at taking the wind out of the sails of his leftist opposition,
especially the Communists, he now veered to the right and saw to it that the
Swatantra Party did not erode the social base of the Congress. The structure
of Indian society hardly permits a successful alliance of urban people with
the lower strata of rural society. Wherever such alliances have been
formed—as, for instance, in Kerala—they have remained the exception
rather than the rule. Furthermore, the majority election system favours a
broad middle-of-the-road party like the Congress and works against smaller
parties with a specific ideological profile whose competition even enhances
the chances of the Congress candidate. The Congress normally got about 42
to 48 per cent of the national vote, but captured 65 to 75 per cent of the
seats in the Lok Sabha (House of Commons). The Socialists, on the other
hand, often obtained about 30 per cent of the national vote, but usually got
only 10 per cent of the seats.
The Socialists can trace their ancestry to the Congress Socialist Party
founded in 1934; pushed out of the Congress by Patel in 1948, they
indulged in several splits which did not contribute to their political success.