participation It is often said that political parties are facing a crisis because they are very unpopular and the citizens are indifferent to political parties. The available evidence shows that this belief is only partly true for India. The evidence, based on a series of large sample surveys conducted over several decades, shows that: Political parties do not enjoy much trust among the people in South Asia. The proportion of those who say their trust in political parties is ‘not much’ or ‘not at all’ is more than those who have ‘some’ or ‘great’ trust.
The same is true of most other democracies as well. Political parties are one of the least trusted institutions all over the world. Yet the level of participation in the activities of political parties was fairly high. The proportion of those who said they were members of some political party was higher in India than many advanced countries like Canada, Japan, Spain and South Korea.
Over the last three decades, the proportion of those who report to be members of political parties in India has gone up steadily. The proportion of those who say they feel ‘close to a political party’ has also gone up in India in this period. Source: SDSA Team, State of Democracy in South Asia, Delhi: Oxford University Press,