Regional parties in India

Regional parties in India came into existence ostensibly to safeguard the legitimate interests of an individual state where the national level parties, for specific constraints, are handicapped to undertake that. With no high-commands in New Delhi ( like the national parties have) to remote-control the wings of these regional parties in states and none to report to about the programs and functioning, they enjoy freedom to do whatever they please, arrogance guides their behavior. The DMK in Tamil Nadu was one of first regional parties in India to come to power, followed by AIADMK and Telugu Desam and Assam Gana Parishad.Unfortunately, none of them proved itself to be a clean party with corruption invading their endeavors. And with the passage of time, the regional parties, at par with the their national level counterparts, have also become corrupt ones. The MIM in Hyderabad, basically a party of land-grabbers is another worst example of family ruled corrupt regional parties in India

At micro level, the regional parties in India also have full control over the resources and they could either use them for the state's welfare or misuse them. Generally, misuse of resources of official machinery is the order displayed by the ruling parties, including the regional ones.No one knows what the leaders do behind the scenes. Jayalalithaa, the leader of AIADMK and former chief minister of Tamil Nadu, described as one of the most corrupt Chief ministers the state ever has had, outscoring her arch rival and present CM, Karunandhi's record in the field, has allegedly managed to evade legal punishment because of the "understanding” reached between her and the Judges, bonded through brokers.Clearly, the truth is hidden from the public. Not only she was safe, but she could also become the chief minister again. In fact, a bold Jayalalithaa would have staked her claim, if there were an award for the most (or "best") corrupt chief minister of India. Karunanidhi as the former chief minister had institutionalized corruption in the state by fixing prices for each and every job (from lowest to highest in every field, including education, law and order and judiciary), admissions to specialized and other courses as well as "services" rendered by the paid employees, but Jaya's sophisticated corruption had helped him to escape punishment.The people have no reasons to forgive him for making even the police department totally partisan and corrupt as well as for misusing them after appointing them on "fixed amount" for each category of the staff. But for Jayalalithaa's mega scandals, Karunanidhi wound’t have come back to power again last time.In fact, her mega scandals had offered Karunanidhi an olive leaf to appear to be a "decent" politician before the voters now, though corrption is all-pervasive in the state.His party, the DMK is also a coalition partner at the Central government, which is supposed to contain corruption in the country.

When the regional parties engage themselves in corrupt practices, their stated goal of taking care of individual states remains in jeopardy. If, however, over all goal of all regional political parties and politicians is to make enough profits from politics, then they are not different from the national parties and politicians. In that case, apart from creating a few corrupt regional leaders with their own regional stamps, the regional politics does not do much for the states, let alone fighting corruption in any way.

http://abdulruff.sulekha.com/blog/post/2007/03/regional-parties-in-india.htm