Examine the roles and strategies of pressure groups in Indian politics.

 Pressure Groups

Pressure groups play pivotal role in Indian democratic politics for the interests of specific groups including farmers, workers, women, marginalised communities and businessmen or industrialists. 

Roles of Pressure Groups

Pressure groups are vital for proper functioning of a vibrant vibrant democracy and important to keep government accountable and transparent. Some important roles of these pressure groups are discussed one by one.

1. Influence Policy Making: Pressure groups try to influence government policies through lobbying, meetings, and public support. For example, influencing policy makers to take decisions with environmental concerns.

2. Voice for social issues: Pressure groups take up different social issues for speedy trials and making better laws, enforcement of laws. For example, RG Kar incident taken by various pressure groups allover India.

3. As a watchdog: Pressure groups always look to the government policies and services to keep government accountable and transparent to the public. For example, former education minister of West Bengal involved in corruption taken up by the many pressure group for taking actions against him.

4. Awakening People: Pressure groups make people aware about the current situations and help them to speak for their demands and many time they use to include the grassroot people to the mainstreaming. For example, women organizations pushing for the women reservation bill.

Strategies of the pressure groups

These civil society organizations use many different strategies to uplift their demand to the government Some of them are discussed below.

1. Lobbying: Pressure groups (NGOs or CSOs) lobby with policy makers of the government to influence for the public policies. Such as business group make huge influence on the policy makers to make public policies favorable to capitalist class or industrial groups.

2. Campaigning: Pressure groups organize campaigns, public rallies and demonstrations to get public support and attention to their causes. For example, many NGOs bringing attention towards environmental consequences after devastating use of natural resources.

3. Social Media: Pressure groups use social media extensively to disseminate information, shape public opinions and pressure the government to act transparently.

4. Litigation: Pressure groups many times take legal way by filing PIL in the courts to challenge the government. 

Challenges of Pressure Groups

Pressure groups are facing many hard problems and challenging to mitigate them. Some of them are including.

1. Lacking in resources and materials: This is a challenging task for a pressure group to work independently and unbiasedly. 

2. Corruption is a major challenge before the pressure groups in India, and it become very difficult to challenge the government authority.

3. Contradiction of interests: Many different pressure groups demand different interest for their respective supporter. This makes contradictions of interests and the powerful lobby wins the 

Criticism of Pressure Groups

Though pressure groups has many positive contribution but many times they only work for a particular group and create a contradiction wither other groups. Some of them are discussed below.

1. Pressure groups work for the interest of particular group or communities such as business groups and these business groups are very powerful to make public policies in favor to them. 

2. Pressure groups works for money and resources, hence many times they convert or divert the public opinions in favoring others and covering the real things.

Conclusion

Pressure groups are needed for keeping government accountable and transparent. For a democracy, the pressure groups or civil societies are fundamentally needed. Along with these, the most important thing is that pressure groups should be used for upliftment the merginalised and deprived communities of the society. At last, we say that pressure groups play a very contributing role in indian democracy.