Time was when India was tired of the extraordinarily long single-party dominance of the polity. There was a perceptible yearning for an alternative, and that could only mean that the numerous opposition parties and groups, often resembling a gaggle of squabbling geese, should somehow reinvent themselves as a viable coalition. Ironically, the doors to this tantalising possibility were opened by Indira Gandhi’s Emergency that, in 1977, ended the Congress monopoly on power in New Delhi a full three decades after Independence and brought the Janata Party to power amidst enormous popular goodwill. What followed was both shocking and staggering. The Janata that pretended to be a party but was, in fact, a four-party coalition collapsed ignominiously and incredibly fast under the collective weight of the clashing ambitions and gargantuan egos of its top three leaders. Indira Gandhi was back in power with a two-thirds majority in 33 months flat. (The shenanigans of the far too numerous coalitions in the states are outside the purview of this article.)

Indira Gandhi and her son, Rajiv, ruled the country for nearly a decade thereafter, and during this period the yearning for a non-Congress coalition became even stronger. Among the protagonists of this idea were leaders of small parties and splinter groups as well as political analysts and activists of a certain bent of mind. By giving representation to many big and small groups, they said, the coalitions would better reflect India’s diversities and ensure governance by ‘genuine consensus’. They jumped with joy when the V.P. Singh government was formed, with the support of the two opposite poles of the political spectrum, the BJP and the Left, because his own Janata Dal had just under 150 MPs, compared with 190-odd of the Congress. Though embarrassed by the dissensions within the coalition and by the inevitable clash between VP’s designs and those of the BJP, the cheerleaders of the coalition loftily declared that this was “creative confusion” that would do India “good in the long run”. Lasting only 11 months, all it bequeathed was the Mandir-Mandal strife.

... contd.