Discuss the pattern of Political Parties from one dominant party system to coalition politics in national politics. (2016, 15 Marks)
W. H. Morris-Jones called the early Indian party system one of one-party dominance. Rajni Kothari, in “The Congress ‘System’ in India” (1964), showed that competition then took place inside the Congress, a party of consensus, while other parties acted as parties of pressure. The move to coalition politics was gradual and happened in phases. Each phase was driven by a new social coalition finding its own party, not simply by a Congress collapse.
The phases
| Phase | Pattern | Defining features |
|---|---|---|
| 1952–67 | Congress system | Congress won nationally and in the states; the opposition was scattered |
| 1967–77 | Erosion | Congress lost power in nine states; Samyukta Vidhayak Dal coalitions; the DMK took Tamil Nadu; the 1969 split |
| 1977–89 | Interrupted dominance | The Janata merger (1977–79); Congress recovered but regional parties rose: TDP (1982), AGP (1985) |
| 1989–98 | Unstable coalitions | Minority governments on outside support: National Front, Chandra Shekhar, United Front |
| 1998–2014 | Bipolar alliance coalitions | Pre-poll NDA and UPA, each led by a national core party |
| 2014– | Dominant party inside a coalition | BJP majorities (282, 303); dependence on allies again from 2024 (BJP 240) |
Yogendra Yadav compresses this into three electoral systems, the third beginning in 1989. His point is that the party system changes when a social base shifts, not merely when a government falls.
What drove the pattern
- Democratic upsurges. In Yadav’s account, OBCs and then Dalits stopped needing Congress as an intermediary, so the Mandal decision of 1990 and the BSP’s rise broke Congress’s coalition from below.
- Mandir and the BJP. The Ayodhya movement gave the BJP a cross-caste Hindu appeal. Its seats rose from 2 (1984) to 85 (1989), 120 (1991) and 182 (1998).
- Regionalisation. Linguistic states gave dominant castes a governing prize. Yadav and Suhas Palshikar show the state became the effective arena of political choice, and regional parties such as the TDP, DMK, AIADMK and JD(U) came to hold the balance in Delhi.
- The electoral system. Under first-past-the-post, E. Sridharan argues, the national multiparty system is an aggregate of state-level bipolar contests. It therefore rewards pre-poll alliances over post-poll bargains.
The changing form of coalition
Coalitions shifted from negative, post-poll fronts, held together only by opposition to Congress or the BJP, to positive, pre-poll alliances. They had a written programme and one large core party. The National Agenda for Governance (1998) and the Common Minimum Programme (2004) marked the change. The NDA of 1999–2004 and both UPA governments completed full terms.
A contested reading
The pattern is not a one-way march to fragmentation. After 2014 a single party again polled over 30%. Pradeep Chhibber and Rahul Verma called this a second dominant-party system, while others saw only a phase within the coalition era. The 2024 verdict supports both views, and Tamil Nadu’s 2026 upheaval, with the rise of the TVK, shows state systems remain autonomous.
Conclusion
India moved from dominance through fragmentation to alliance-based competition. The path was cyclical rather than linear. Coalition is now the settled form of national government even when one party is large, because accommodating India’s regional and social diversity requires it.