(a) Describe three main functions of political parties.

(i) Political parties select candidates to contest elections.

(ii) Parties put forward different policies and programmes and the voters choose from them.

(iii) Parties play a decisive role in making laws for a country.

(iv) Parties form and run governments. Parties recruit leaders, train them and then make them ministers to run the government in the way they want.

(v) Those parties that lose in the elections play the role of opposition to the parties in power.

(vi) They voice different views and criticise government for its failures or wrong policies.

(vii) Parties shape public opinion by raising and highlighting issues.

(viii) Parties sometimes also launch movements for the resolution of problems faced by people.

(ix) Parties provide people access to government machinery and welfare schemes implemented by governments.

(b) Describe three major challenges faced by the political parties in India.

(i) All over the world there is lack of internal democracy within parties- Parties do not keep membership registers, do not hold organisational meetings, and do not conduct internal elections regularly.

(ii) Most political parties do not practice open and transparent procedures for their functioning. In many parties, the top positions are always controlled by members of one family.

(iii) There is growing role of money and muscle power in parties, especially during elections. Since parties are focused only on winning elections, they tend to use short-cuts to win elections.

(iv) Very often parties do not seem to offer a meaningful choice to the voters.