INDIAN POLITICS ENTERED a new era at the beginning of the 1990s. The period of political domination by the Congress branch of the Indian National Congress came to an end with the party’s defeat in the 1989 general elections, and India began a period of intense multiparty political competition. Even though the Congress (I) regained power as a minority government in 1991, its grasp on power was unsettled. The Nehruvian socialist principles that the party had used to fashion India’s political agenda had lost much of its popular appeal. The Congress political leadership had lost the mantle of moral integrity inherited from the Indian National Congress’s role in the independence movement, and it was widely viewed as corrupt. Support among key social bases of the Congress political combination was seriously disintegrating. The main alternative to the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party, launched on a campaign to reorganize the Indian electorate in an effort to create a Hindu nationalist majority combination. Simultaneously, such parties as the Janata Dal, the Samajwadi Party, and the Bahujan Samaj Party attempted to arise to power on the peak of an cooperation of interests uniting Dalits, Backward Classes, Scheduled Tribes, and religious minorities.

 

The structure of India’s federal–or union–system not only creates a strong central government but also has forwarded the concentration of power in the central government in general and in particular in the Office of the Prime Minister. This centralization of power has been a source of considerable controversy and political tension. It is likely to further irritate political battle because of the increasing pluralism of the country’s party system and the growing diversity of interest-group representation.