Despite the tectonic shifts over the past six years, India’s political landscape remains mostly bipolar. On one end is the cadre-based ideological Bharatiya Janata Party. On the other is a party of personality, the Congress.
Since 2014, the BJP has become dominant. Its principal vote catcher is Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while the central leadership is dominated by Amit Shah, the former party president who is now the home minister.
The BJP’s reliance on its top leadership to win elections is similar to the strategy used by the Congress during the Indira Gandhi era in the 1970s and the Rajiv Gandhi period in the 1980s.
Given that the BJP has been a cadre-based party since its inception, its willingness to adopt a “high command culture” revolving around a single leader reflects the benefits it has repeated from this change of electoral strategy.
Centralisation of decision makingHigh command culture can be loosely described as a system where a single leader or a select few take all political and administrative decisions. It undermines democratic decision making within a party and is a term that has so far been used to describe the functioning of the Congress party’s mode of operation.
High command culture took root in the Congress after it split in 1969...
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