Question

Describe the five major functions of political parties performed in a democracy.

Answer 1

Hint:E.E. Schattschneider (1942), a political scientist, did a comprehensive research over party politics, concluded that political parties created democracy, and modern democracy is unthinkable save except in terms of parties.
Political parties play a crucial role in our representative form of government. The ruling party forms the government, while the opposition tends to keep a check on it. They ensure communication between the public and the government in order to seek collective welfare.

Complete answer:
In democracies, elections are fought usually by the candidates which are put forward by the parties. They also come up with a manifesto which speaks of their ideology and policies they wish to pursue, as seen in the case of Bharatiya Janata Party’s Hindutva.
To summarize, they put forward different policies and programmes and the voters choose from them and reduce multitude of oppositions to specifications.
They play an important role in framing the laws of the country, as the bills are actively debated and discussed upon in the parliament.
The ruling party runs the government. It recruits leaders and trains them to be ministers and run the government to do their jobs well.

The opposition voices different views and criticizes the failures of the government, to propagate the freedom of speech, and spread awareness about the shortcomings.
They shape public opinion as they have thousands of influencers across the nation. They provide the common folk with access to government machinery and welfare schemes as it gets easier for a person to meet a local party leader than a government official.
They tend to face many challenges. There is a lack of internal democracy when personal loyalty to the leaders becomes more important than loyalty to party principles. Dynastic succession causes top positions of a party to be filled by the members of one family, or people close to the leaders.

Note: Convergence of ideas is one of the greatest issues faced by the political parties. Their stands are not water tight. In addition, there is a lot of corruption, even at the most basic levels. Coalition governments, if formed, lose their coherence due to conflicts in ideologies and power play.
In the Indian context, vote politics has taken a shallow turn as political parties ask for votes from perspectives of communalism, casteism and classism. They are often responsible for spreading hate amongst communities and threatening the diversity of India as a whole, as seen in case of Ram Mandir and Babri Masjid. Long term reforms have become the need of the hour.