Coalition Lessons IGNORED?

India's experience with rainbow coalition governments is bad, which is why the INDIA bloc has to work harder for voter confidence

- Snigdhendu Bhattacharya

AHEAD of the 1977 Lok Sabha election, the repression of Emergency rule had helped a wide range of the Congress' opponents, from opposite ideological poles, give up their separate identities and form a unified platform to dethrone Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. They gathered around freedom fighter Jayprakash 'JP' Narayan, the tallest living politician of the time, who served as the nucleus of the newly-launched Janata Party. He was the face of a united opposition to Gandhi's authoritarianism.

Prior to the 1989 Lok Sabha election, again a range of opposition parties came together against Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, especially on corruption charges. An opposition alliance formed around dissident Congress leader Vishwanath Pratap Singh, who had launched his own party, Janata Dal, initiating what is often considered the 'second Janata experiment.

In 1996, a post-poll coalition of various regional parties wanted the CPI(M)'s Jyoti Basu-the Bengal chief minister for 19 years straight at that time to take up the premiership and serve as the nucleus. His party did not allow it, though. The Left parties were not formally part of any of these coalitions but extended external support when necessary.

Ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha election, an apparently apolitical anti-corruption movement developed against the Congress' Manmohan Singh government with social worker Anna Hazare as the main face. Though centred in Delhi, the movement helped spread anti-Congress sentiments to different parts of the country until the BJP announced Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi-already a polarising name as their prime ministerial face. Modi's anti-corruption pitch took off from where Hazare had left it.