THE REPUBLICquarter of all posts in government service; together with the reservations
for the Scheduled Castes this added up to nearly one half of all such posts.
This caused a great upheaval in northern India where the high castes such
as Brahmins, Rajputs and Banias were strong and were equally concerned
with jobs for their boys in government service. In southern India the
peasant castes had long since taken over power and the rather marginal
high castes had turned to the private sector for employment. In northern
India high caste boys got so excited over this issue that some of them
immolated themselves in public and others staged protest demonstrations
in major cities. The BJP was mainly supported by the high caste voters of
northern India and saw that V.P.Singh was bent on outflanking the BJP
after having contributed to its success by the electoral pact of 1989. If the
BJP had come out openly against the OBCs, it would have fallen into
V.P.Singh’s trap. Instead of this it played the Hindu card and confronted
him by fighting for Ramjanmabhumi. Taking a stand against the Muslims
in this way helped the BJP, which could not hope to get Muslim votes
anyhow, while V.P.Singh was relying on Muslim support. Moreover, the
easiest way of defining a Hindu is that he is not a Muslim. The OBCs
could be rallied to the BJP’s cause in this way. The contest for votes
between V.P.Singh and the BJP which expressed itself in those two
manoeuvres of outflanking each other created tensions which deeply
affected North Indian society.
When V.P.Singh’s government fell, the BJP nevertheless did not press for
immediate elections. It could not be sure of improving its position since
this time V.P.Singh would certainly not be prepared to conclude an
electoral pact with it as he had done in 1989. The other parties were also
not ready for an election as yet. Election expenditure is phenomenal in
India and the parties were still in the process of replenishing their coffers
which they had emptied only a year before. Thus everybody was willing to
put up with another minority government led by Chandrashekhar whose
political base was insignificant and who depended entirely on the
toleration of the National Congress which could topple his government at
any time convenient to it. This was done in February 1991 and an election
campaign was launched in the course of which Rajiv Gandhi was
assassinated near Madras in May 1991, most probably by Tamil Tigers
from Sri Lanka.
Fiscal indiscipline and political instability ruined India’s
creditworthiness and plunged it into a serious balance of payments crisis.
As India’s bankruptcy seemed to be imminent, the non-resident Indians
who had parked large funds in India because of the high interest rates
prevailing there, withdrew their money—a typical case of a self-fulfilling
prophecy. The bankruptcy was only averted because the World Bank and
the International Monetary Fund bailed out India at the time when the
new government took office in June 1991.