WBB • Class XII • Political Science • Ch 11
Estimated Time: 45 Mins
Study Progress: In Progress
Indian Politics: Recent Developments
The concluding decade of the twentieth century and the opening decades of the twenty-first century marked an epochal transformation in the character, structure, and dynamics of Indian democratic politics. For the first four decades following independence in 1947, Indian political reality was defined by what political scientist Rajni Kothari famously characterized as the 'Congress System'—a dominant umbrella party capable of mediating diverse social conflicts, managing internal factional competition, and commanding stable legislative majorities in New Delhi. However, the general elections of 1989 decisively fractured this historic paradigm, initiating a transformative era characterized by five tectonic developments:
First, the End of the Congress System and the Advent of Coalition Politics. In the ninth general elections of November 1989, the Indian National Congress suffered a catastrophic defeat, plunging from 415 Lok Sabha seats in 1984 to just 197 seats. Although Congress remained the single largest party, it was unable to form a government, giving birth to a fragmented parliament. For the next twenty-five years—from 1989 until 2014—no single political party was able to secure an outright parliamentary majority on its own. Instead, governance in New Delhi became structurally dependent on multi-party coalitions and minority governments supported from outside: the National Front government of V. P. Singh (1989-1990) supported simultaneously by the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Left Front; the short-lived Chandra Shekhar ministry (1990-1991); the minority Congress government of P. V. Narasimha Rao (1991-1996); the 13-day Atal Bihari Vajpayee government (1996); the United Front governments of H. D. Deve Gowda and I. K. Gujral (1996-1998) supported by Congress; the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) governments under Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1998-2004); and the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) governments under Dr. Manmohan Singh (2004-2014). This era transformed regional political parties into indispensable national 'kingmakers', profoundly federalizing the Union executive.
Second, the Rise of Mandal Politics and the Affirmation of the Other Backward Classes (OBCs). In August 1990, Prime Minister V. P. Singh took the historic and politically explosive decision to implement the long-shelved recommendations of the Second Backward Classes Commission, popularly known as the Mandal Commission (chaired by B. P. Mandal). The commission had identified 3,743 castes comprising approximately 52 percent of India's population as Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBCs) and recommended a 27 percent reservation in central government employment. The decision ignited massive student demonstrations, self-immolations, and fierce upper-caste backlash across urban North India. Yet, it irreversibly altered Indian democracy by providing constitutional recognition and substantial political leverage to the intermediate agrarian castes, leading to the dramatic rise of socialist and backward-caste-led parties such as the Samajwadi Party (SP), the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) under Kanshi Ram and Mayawati. In November 1992, the Supreme Court of India in the landmark Indira Sawhney v. Union of India case constitutionally validated the 27 percent reservation, while introducing the 'Creamy Layer' doctrine and fixing an overall 50 percent ceiling on affirmative action.
Third, the Structural Transformation of the Economy through the New Economic Policy of 1991. Confronted with a catastrophic Balance of Payments (BoP) crisis in mid-1991—where foreign exchange reserves had plummeted to barely enough to finance two weeks of essential imports—the Narasimha Rao government, under Finance Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, initiated radical structural adjustment reforms. The state abandoned the historic Nehruvian-Mahalanobis model of state-led import substitution and public sector monopoly. Instead, India embraced Liberalisation, Privatisation, and Globalisation (LPG): dismantling the suffocating industrial 'License-Permit Raj', reducing tariffs, opening financial markets to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), and integrating India with the global capitalist economy. Crucially, despite sharp initial ideological debates, every subsequent ruling coalition—from the United Front to the NDA and UPA—maintained the core trajectory of these reforms, establishing an enduring national economic consensus.
Fourth, the Ascendancy of Hindutva and the Politics of the Ayodhya Dispute. The 1980s witnessed the political resurgence of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which adopted the ideology of 'Hindutva' (cultural nationalism, originally conceptualized by V. D. Savarkar) as its central mobilizing philosophy. Following the Rajiv Gandhi government's controversial overturning of the Supreme Court's Shah Bano maintenance judgment through the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act of 1986 and the subsequent opening of the locks at the disputed Babri Masjid site in Ayodhya, the BJP launched a massive cultural mobilization for the construction of a Ram temple. L. K. Advani's Somnath-to-Ayodhya Rath Yatra in September-October 1990 galvanized millions, leading to the collapse of the V. P. Singh government. The agitation culminated on 6 December 1992 with the demolition of the disputed sixteenth-century structure in Ayodhya by kar sevaks, sparking widespread communal violence, the Mumbai riots of 1992-1993, and decades of legal litigation. This protracted conflict was finally settled on 9 November 2019, when a unanimous five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court awarded the disputed 2.77-acre site for the construction of a Ram temple while directing the allocation of a separate five-acre plot in Ayodhya for a mosque.
Fifth, the Emergence of a New Political Consensus and the Transition to the Second Dominant Party System. While public discourse appeared bitterly fractured along caste, religious, and regional lines, the post-1989 era actually consolidated four fundamental national consensuses across the political spectrum: (1) Consensus on New Economic Policies, with all major parties supporting economic growth, privatization, and global trade; (2) Consensus on the Acceptance of the Social and Political Claims of OBCs; (3) Consensus on the Legitimacy of Regional Parties in National Governance; and (4) Shift from Ideological Dogmatism to Pragmatic Coalition Management through Common Minimum Programmes.
The general elections of 2014 and 2019 under Narendra Modi shattered the twenty-five-year coalition deadlock, securing historic outright parliamentary majorities (282 seats in 2014, 303 seats in 2019) for the BJP. This ushered in what political scientists term the 'Second Dominant Party System' or the 'Fourth Party System', characterized by a hegemonic central party combining cultural nationalism, broad-based subaltern social coalitions, and massive digital welfare governance (the JAM Trinity of Jan Dhan, Aadhaar, and Mobile alongside Direct Benefit Transfers). In June 2024, the eighteenth general elections produced another historic recalibration, where the BJP secured 240 seats, leading an NDA coalition government alongside key regional allies (TDP and JD-U) and facing a revitalized parliamentary opposition (the INDIA bloc), reaffirming the resilient, cyclical, and deeply pluralistic genius of Indian democracy.
