Alliance politics

The 1990s brought powerful new parties representing Dalits and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) into the national spotlight. Many of these were also strong regional parties, rooted in specific states and local identities. Their rise reshaped how governments were formed at the Centre.

In 1996, these parties came together in the United Front government. This coalition was similar to the 1989 National Front — it included the Janata Dal and several regional parties. But the political alignments had shifted dramatically. In 1989, both the Left and the BJP had supported the National Front because their common goal was to keep the Congress out of power. By 1996, the BJP was no longer supporting the government. Instead, the Congress itself backed the United Front, because both the Congress and the Left now wanted to keep the BJP out of power.

This flip-flop shows how unstable political equations had become. No single party could command a majority on its own.

The BJP, however, was steadily consolidating its position. It emerged as the largest party in the 1991 and 1996 elections. In 1996, it was invited to form the government, but most other parties opposed its policies, and it could not secure a majority in the Lok Sabha. The BJP finally came to power by leading a coalition government from May 1998 to June 1999, and was re-elected in October 1999. Atal Behari Vajpayee was Prime Minister during both these NDA governments, and the 1999 government completed its full term.

Thus, with the 1989 elections, a long phase of coalition politics began in India. Since then, there have been eleven governments at the Centre, all of them either coalitions or minority governments supported by other parties that did not formally join the government. In this new phase, any government could be formed only with the participation or support of many regional parties. This applied to:

• 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

This trend changed in 2014. …