8.1 Why This Chapter Matters — Four Questions for the 1990s

This is the final chapter of your Class 12 textbook on Politics in India Since Independence. It takes a synoptic view of the last two and a half decades of Indian political life — a period that is at once complex, controversial and still very close to us. The new era was impossible to foresee from the vantage point of the 1980s; it is still difficult to fully understand. Yet four questions sit at the centre of the political change of this period and run through every section that follows:

• What are the implications of the rise of coalition politics^? for our democracy?
• What is Mandalisation all about, and in which ways will it change the nature of political representation?
• What is the legacy of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement?
• What does the rise of a new policy consensus do to the nature of political choices?

8.2 The Five Shadows — Context of the 1990s

You read in Chapter 6 that Rajiv Gandhi became Prime Minister after the assassination of Indira Gandhi and led the Congress to a massive victory in the Lok Sabha elections of 1984. As the decade of the 1980s drew to a close, the country witnessed five developments that left a long-lasting imprint on Indian politics. Together, they form the backdrop of every story this chapter will tell.

8.2.1 The Rajiv Gandhi Years and Their Discontents (1984–89)

The Rajiv Gandhi government inherited an enormous mandate but also a series of long shadows. The Bhopal gas tragedy of December 1984 raised hard questions about industrial regulation; the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) was sent to Sri Lanka in 1987; and the Bofors scandal of 1986–87 over a defence contract led to the resignation of Finance Minister V. P. Singh^?. The Shah Bano case of 1985–86 and the resulting Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act of 1986 opened the secularism debate that would dominate the next decade. The 52nd Amendment of 1985 introduced the anti-defection law in response to legislators frequently switching parties for ministerial gains.

8.3 The Election of 1989 — End of the 'Congress System'

The Lok Sabha election of November 1989 produced no clear majority for any single party. The Congress was reduced to 197 seats and chose to sit in the opposition. The National Front — itself an alliance of the Janata Dal and several regional parties — emerged as the largest non-Congress group. It received support from two diametrically opposite political forces: the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from the right and the Left Front from the left, neither of which joined the government. V. P. Singh took over as Prime Minister of the Janata Dal-led National Front coalition government.

Political scientists describe the 1989 election as the end of what they had called the 'Congress system'. To be sure, the Congress remained an important party and would rule the country longer than any other party even after 1989. But it lost the kind of centrality it had earlier enjoyed in the party system — it was no longer the natural pole around which Indian politics arranged itself.

8.4 The Era of Coalitions — A New Logic of Power

Although a large number of parties had always contested elections in India, the elections held since 1989 changed the arithmetic of representation. Several parties now emerged in such a way that one or two of them did not corner most of the votes or seats. As a result, no single party secured a clear Lok Sabha majority in any general election from 1989 till 2014. Coalition or minority governments became the rule rather than the exception, and regional parties became central to the formation of any ruling alliance at the Centre. The cycle was broken in 2014, when the BJP won a clear majority on its own, and again in 2019.

A long phase of coalition politics had begun. From 1989 onwards, eleven governments at the Centre were either coalitions or minority governments supported by parties that did not formally join. Every major formation of this period — the National Front in 1989, the United Front in 1996 and 1997, the BJP-led coalition in 1998, the NDA in 1999, the UPA in 2004 and 2009 — fits this pattern. The era can also be seen as the long-term consequence of a slower change: as you saw in earlier chapters, the Congress had itself been a 'coalition' of different interests and social strata. From the late 1960s, various sections kept leaving the Congress fold and forming their own parties. These departures weakened the Congress without enabling any single party to replace it.

8.4.1 The V. P. Singh Government (December 1989 – November 1990)

The National Front government under V. P. Singh ruled for less than a year, but it set the policy agenda for an entire decade. Its most consequential decision came in August 1990, when V. P. Singh announced the implementation of the Mandal Commission's recommendation to reserve 27 per cent of jobs in the central government and its undertakings for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs)^?. The decision triggered violent anti-Mandal agitations, especially in north Indian cities and university campuses. The government collapsed when the BJP withdrew support over the Ram Janmabhoomi issue after L. K. Advani's Rath Yatra.

8.4.2 The Chandrashekhar Government (November 1990 – June 1991)

A breakaway faction of the Janata Dal led by Chandrashekhar formed the Samajwadi Janata Party and took office with outside support from the Congress. The arrangement was inherently unstable; the Congress withdrew support after a few months, and the country went to a mid-term Lok Sabha election in 1991.

8.4.3 The Tragedy of May 1991 — Rajiv Gandhi's Assassination

The 1991 election campaign was overshadowed by tragedy. On 21 May 1991, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a Sri Lankan Tamil linked to the LTTE^? while campaigning at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu. Following his death, the Congress chose P. V. Narasimha Rao as the Prime Minister of a Congress-led minority government. Congress emerged as the single largest party in the post-assassination phase of polling.

8.5 The Narasimha Rao Government (1991–96) — A Quiet Revolution

P. V. Narasimha Rao took over as Prime Minister in June 1991 at a moment of acute economic crisis. India was facing a Balance of Payments crisis so severe that the country had to pledge gold with the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan to secure foreign exchange. To avert default, the government turned to the International Monetary Fund (IMF)^?. Rao chose Manmohan Singh, an economist of high standing, as his Finance Minister.

Together, Rao and Manmohan Singh launched what came to be called the New Economic Policy or the structural adjustment programme. The 1991 Industrial Policy dismantled large parts of the licence-permit system, reduced industrial licensing, allowed foreign direct investment in key sectors, devalued the rupee, cut tariffs and reformed the tax structure. These changes, often summarised as Liberalisation, Privatisation, Globalisation (LPG), radically changed the direction the Indian economy had pursued since Independence. Although these policies were initiated by Rajiv Gandhi, they became visibly central from 1991 onwards. Subsequent governments — of every coalition combination — broadly continued the same approach.

8.6 The Mid-1990s — Three Governments in Two Years (1996–98)

The 11th Lok Sabha election of 1996 threw up a fragmented mandate. The BJP emerged as the single largest party with 161 seats and was invited to form the government. A. B. Vajpayee was sworn in as Prime Minister but resigned in 13 days after failing to demonstrate a majority on the floor of the House. The United Front, an alliance of Janata Dal and several regional parties, then formed the government with outside support from the Congress. H. D. Deve Gowda took over as Prime Minister; when he was replaced within a year, I. K. Gujral succeeded him. The United Front was similar in shape to the National Front of 1989, but the alignment had reversed: in 1989, the BJP and the Left both supported a non-Congress government to keep the Congress out of power; in 1996, the Left continued to support a non-Congress government, but the Congress now supported it from outside, both wanting to keep the BJP out of power.

8.7 NDA II — Vajpayee, Pokhran II and Kargil (1998–2004)

The 12th Lok Sabha election of 1998 brought the BJP back as the largest party. It now formed the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) — a coalition of like-minded regional parties. A. B. Vajpayee was sworn in as Prime Minister of the NDA government. This first NDA government lasted just over a year before losing a confidence vote in 1999, but in the elections of October 1999 the NDA was re-elected. Vajpayee thus headed two NDA governments in a row, the second of which completed its full term till 2004.

Two events dominated the early Vajpayee years and reshaped India's standing in world affairs:

8.8 The 2004 Election — UPA and a New Alignment

In the elections of 2004, the Congress too entered into coalition arrangements in a big way. The NDA was defeated and a new coalition government led by the Congress, called the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), came to power. The UPA government received support from the Left Front parties from outside. The 2004 elections also witnessed a partial revival of the Congress party, which increased its seats once again after 1991. There was, however, only a negligible difference between the votes polled by the Congress and its allies and those polled by the BJP and its allies — the political competition of the 1990s had now firmly settled into a bipolar coalition system.

8.9 Why Coalitions Became the New Normal — Three Causes

Look back at the journey from 1947 through the chapters of this book, and the rise of coalitions appears not as a sudden disturbance but as the result of three slow-moving changes:

8.10 Memorise These Dates & Names — Part 1