ABSTRACT
This chapter explains how the process of mass input by the way of articulation and aggregation of demands through elections, movements and political parties takes place. The legitimacy of political systems is conditional on their capacity to accommodate demands emerging from society. The enormous resources that political power brought to the hands of these leaders for the first time already schooled in governance because of their participation in provincial governments under British rule, helped. India's sixteenth general elections resulted in what most have agreed was a decimation of the country's Grand Old Party, the Indian National Congress and a resounding victory for the Bharatiya Janata Party. Social mobilization and its political containment, largely, though not exclusively, within the framework of political institutions, appear to have taken place in India as two independent but ultimately convergent processes. Labour unions in India, as in most developing countries, have been highly political.
