RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN INDIAN POLITICS
The Congress party, which had been the dominant political force since India’s independence in 1947, faced a massive electoral setback in 1989. From a landslide victory of 415 seats in the 1984 elections (held in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination), the party’s tally was drastically reduced to 197 seats in 1989.
This change marked the end of the Congress’s unparalleled dominance in Indian politics, referred to by political scientists as the “Congress system”. Although the Congress did come back to power after the mid-term elections in 1991 and remained a significant political entity, it no longer enjoyed the unchallenged centrality it once had.
The Mandal Commission was set up to identify socially and educationally backward classes and recommend measures for their upliftment. The controversial decision of the National Front government in 1990 to implement the commission’s recommendation to reserve jobs in the central government for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) led to widespread protests.
This ‘Mandal issue’ polarised society into supporters and opponents of the OBC reservation. The impact of this decision reverberated through Indian politics, with caste-based mobilisation and politics taking centre stage in the subsequent years.
A marked shift from the earlier socialist-inspired economic policies, the late 1980s and early 1990s saw India moving towards liberalisation, privatisation, and globalisation.