Pressure Groups

• Intro- The pressure group is a group of people who are organised actively for promoting and defending their common interest. It is so called as it attempts to bring a change in the public policy by exerting pressure on the government

• Analytical points on PG:
• Due to their role in public policy making  ,PG are termed as legislation behind legislature.
• They have been called as invisible empires by Finer.
• Richard d Lambert calls PG as unofficial govt.
• As per structural functional approach of Gabriel and Powell PG do the work of interest articulation.
• Analysis of Robert Dahl and Charles Lindblom shows that it is through Polyarchies (various pressure groups) that people exercise power in a democracy.
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  Rajani Kothari-calls them as reservoirs of leaders and agents of modernisation. Ex- Arvind kejriwal was part of Anna Andolan, BJP leaders trained under RSS
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  Says the market and the state developed faster than the community leaving the community behind. This left a space to be occupied by civil society organisations/PGs
• Terms like civil society and participatory development came in vogue along with liberalisation
• Particularly after 72nd AA and 73rd AA, these movements have played the role of opposition to elected representatives from village to parliament

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• Techniques used by pressure groups
• Electioneering- Placing in public office person’s favour their interest
• Lobbying: persuading public officials to adopt policies of their interest. Funding political parties.
• Propagandizing- influencing the public opinion, publishing statistics in favour of their claim, use of media
• Social movements- “left” Groups do the state politics to pressurise the government. Popular examples include the lokpal Bill, RTI, etc
• Illegal methods like chakkajam, strikes, bandhs
• Invoking caste/reigion by primitive PG

• Contemporary ex of PG:
• Dairy farmers pressurised govt to against RCEP terms on dairy products from Australia and New Zealand
• Environmental movement like chipko, narmada bachao andolan, chilika bachao andolan
• Recent farmer protests by kisan sabha on farm laws—> Delhi chalo movement
• BMS, AITUC, INTUC—> protests against new labour codes

• Pressure groups and political parties
• Intro- Edmund Burke define political party as group of people having shared ideology coming together for the pursuit of common interest. While Finer views pressure groups as invisible empires
• According to structural-functional approach of Gabriel and Powell, political parties does the function of interest aggregation(converting demands into action) while pressure group helps in interest articulation(voicing demands)
• In a democracy, political party fight elections to come to power. On the other hand pressure groups have no desire to attain political offices.
• Political parties in terms of structure are associational in nature . Nature of pressure groups might range from Associational , institutional, non-associational and anomic
• In spite of differences, both are the notions of collective behaviour where people come together as zoo  politikon in “order to act in concert with each other”(Hannah Arendt)

• Conclusion:
• In the words of Hannah Arendt, PG help the citizens in “reclaiming the public sphere and help in realising the goals of a participative and a deliberative democracy.

• further reading: https://www.epw.in/system/files/pdf/1964_16/13/pressure_groups_democracy_and_development.pdf