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www.GOALias.blogspot.com178 Politics in India since Independencea coalition government from May 1998 to June 1999 and wasre-elected in October 1999. Atal Behari Vajpayee was the PrimeMinister during both these NDA governments and his governmentformed in 1999 completed its full term.Credit: Ajit Ninan/India TodayA cartoonist’s depiction of the change from one-party dominance to a multi-partyalliance system.Thus, with the elections of 1989, a long phase of coalition politicsbegan in India. Since then, there have been nine governments atthe Centre, all of which have either been coalition governments orminority governments supported by other parties, which did not jointhe government. In this new phase, any government could be formedonly with the participation or support of many regional parties. Thisapplied to the National Front in 1989, the United Front in 1996 and1997, the NDA in 1997, BJP-led coalition in 1998, NDA in 1999 andthe UPA in 2004.Let us connect this development with what we have learnt so far.The era of coalition governments may be seen as a long-term trendresulting from relatively silent changes that were taking place overthe last few decades.We saw in Chapter Two that in earlier times, it was the Congressparty itself that was a ‘coalition’ of different interests and different socialstrata and groups. This gave rise to the term ‘Congress system’.