THE REPUBLICcandidate. For a brief moment it seemed as if Jyoti Basu, the Communist
chief minister of West Bengal, would emerge as a suitable leader. Being
the most senior chief minister who enjoyed the respect of his peers he was
the obvious candidate, but his party asked him to decline the offer. It was
then that H.D.Deve Gowda, the chief minister of Karnataka, made the
grade. He represented the Janata Party which had once been a national
party, but had lost its national appeal in the meantime. It had won only
43 seats in the federal elections of which 15 belonged to Karnataka and
21 to Bihar. With this limited support Deve Gowda could not dominate
his coalition government and depended on the motley crowd of small
parties which formed the National Front. The most important element of
the stability of his government was the reluctance of all parties to face
new elections. The Congress had been humbled and could not hope to
improve its position in the immediate future and the BJP had just tested
the limits of its support.
For several months after the elections Narasimha Rao was still able to
retain his hold on the Congress Party. His followers were reluctant to
desert him, but finally various charges forced him to relinquish his party’s
presidency before the year ended. However, this did not immediately clear
the way for a dynamic renewal of the Congress Party in the opposition, the
more so as the party was bound to ‘tolerate’ the government. The fate of
the Indian political system proved to be rather unpredictable at the end of
- Nevertheless it can be stated that the democratic process has passed
many trying tests and India has as yet defied all pessimists who have seen
chaos and disintegration lurking just around the corner.
The resilience of the Indian political system was one more demonstrated
in April 1997 when a sudden crisis led to the fall of Deve Gowda’s
minority government and a new government led by the prime minister
Inder Gujral was formed within eleven days. Actually the government had
appeared to be in a good condition. The finance minister Chidambaram
had submitted a budget which won universal acclaim. The stock market
responded to this by a massive rally and investors both at home and
abroad felt encouraged by his policy. But then the president of the
Congress Party, Sitaram Kesri, announced that he would withdraw his
support of the government. Deve Gowda had made the fatal mistake of
instigating corruption charges against the Congress establishment. He felt
that the Congress would be more ‘tolerant’ if it was cornered in this way.
Kesri may have expected that he would also be prosecuted and wished to
show that Congress tolerance had its limits. A vote of no confidence
toppled the government on 11 April and hectic consultations began which
were aimed at reviving the old government under a new leader. None of
the parties was interested in elections at this early stage. It was rumoured
that the Congress Party might forget about its aversion to coalitions and
join the National Front, but this did not happen. The discussion then