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Opposition parties are weak but not irrelevant. They serve as pressure valves – raising issues Congress ignores, but they operate within the Congress-defined framework. True alternation in power does not occur. rajni kothari politics in india
: Competition did not happen between parties, but within Congress through a complex system of internal factions. : Opposition parties are weak but not irrelevant
On interest groups, caste associations, and trade unions. These are transmission belts between society and state, but they are fragmented and often tied to political parties. : Competition did not happen between parties, but
While Kothari celebrated the stability of the "Congress System" in his early work, he was also prescient in observing its eventual decline. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, he noted the breakdown of consensus. He argued that the very success of the dominant system had created new aspirations among the marginalized—students, farmers, and backward classes—which the institutionalized Congress system could no longer accommodate.