Class 12 Political Science Book 2 Chapter 8 Recent Developments in Indian Politics Important Questions with Answers in English

Q. What did the elections of 1989 mark the end of?

Answer: They marked the end of what political scientists have called the ‘Congress system’. The Congress remained an important party after 1989, but it lost the kind of centrality it had earlier enjoyed in the party system.

Q. Name the two diametrically opposite political groups that supported the National Front government formed in 1989.

Answer: The BJP and the Left Front. Both supported the government from outside; neither of them joined it.

Q. Who was the Chairperson of the Second Backward Classes Commission?

Answer: Bindeshwari Prasad Mandal. The commission is popularly known as the Mandal Commission after his name.

Q. What did the Mandal Commission recommend reserving, and how much?

Answer: It recommended reserving 27 per cent of seats in educational institutions and government jobs for the backward castes.

Q. What does BAMCEF stand for, and in which year was it formed?

Answer: The Backward and Minority Communities Employees Federation, formed in 1978.

Q. By whom was Hindutva popularised as the basis of Indian nationhood?

Answer: By Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.

Q. What do the terms pitrubhu and punyabhu mean in the chapter’s account of Hindutva?

Answer: Pitrubhu means fatherland and punyabhu means holy land. The chapter says Hindutva basically meant that to be an Indian, one must accept India as both.

Q. On what date did the constitutional bench of the Supreme Court deliver its verdict on the Ayodhya issue, and by what margin?

Answer: On November 9, 2019, by a 5-0 verdict.

Q. How many governments has the Centre had since the elections of 1989, and what kind of governments were they?

Answer: Eleven. All of them have been either coalition governments or minority governments supported by other parties which did not join the government.

Q. What does the chapter give as the total number of seats in the Indian Parliament?

Answer: 543 seats, of which 530 are from the States and 13 from the Union Territories.

Q. What was the ‘Mandal issue’?

Answer: It was the dispute between the supporters and the opponents of OBC reservations. It arose after the new National Front government decided in 1990 to implement the Mandal Commission’s recommendation that jobs in central government should be reserved for the Other Backward Classes. The decision led to violent ‘anti-Mandal’ protests in different parts of the country, and the chapter says the issue went on to play an important role in shaping politics since 1989.

Q. Why did the Congress sit in the opposition after the elections of 1989, and who formed the government instead?

Answer: The 1989 elections defeated the Congress but gave no other party a majority either. The Congress was still the largest party in the Lok Sabha, but it did not have a clear majority, and it therefore decided to sit in the opposition. The National Front, itself an alliance of the Janata Dal and some other regional parties, formed a coalition government with support from the BJP and the Left Front, neither of which joined it.

Q. How was the United Front government of 1996 similar to the National Front of 1989, and how was it different?

Answer: It was similar in composition: like the National Front, it included the Janata Dal and several regional parties. It was different in who supported it. In 1989 the BJP and the Left had supported the National Front to keep the Congress out of power; in 1996 the BJP did not support the government, and the Congress did, because both the Congress and the Left now wanted to keep the BJP out of power. The chapter uses the contrast to show how unstable the political equations were.

Q. Who was Karpoori Thakur, and why does the chapter name him?

Answer: He was the then Chief Minister of Bihar. The chapter names him as a pioneer in raising the demand for reservations for backward castes in north India and at the national level, during the tenure of the Janata Party government in 1977-79. His government had introduced a new policy of reservations for OBCs in Bihar, and it was following this that the central government appointed the Mandal Commission in 1978.

Q. What does the chapter’s note on B.P. Mandal (1918-1982) tell us about him?

Answer: He was a socialist leader from Bihar and an M.P. from Bihar for 1967-1970 and again for 1977-1979. He was Chief Minister of Bihar for just a month and a half in 1968, and he joined the Janata Party in 1977. He chaired the Second Backward Classes Commission, which recommended reservations for the Other Backward Classes.

Q. What does the chapter’s note on Kanshi Ram (1934-2006) tell us about him?

Answer: He was a proponent of Bahujan empowerment and the founder of the Bahujan Samaj Party. He left his central government job for social and political work, and founded BAMCEF, DS-4 and finally the BSP in 1984. The note calls him an astute political strategist who regarded political power as the master key to attaining social equality, and credits him with the Dalit resurgence in the north Indian States.

Q. What was the Shah Bano case, and how did the government respond to the Supreme Court’s ruling?

Answer: In 1985 a 62-year old divorced Muslim woman filed a case for maintenance from her former husband, and the Supreme Court ruled in her favour. Orthodox Muslims saw the order as an interference in Muslim Personal Law. On the demand of some Muslim leaders, the government passed the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986, which nullified the Supreme Court’s judgement. The chapter records that this action was opposed by many women’s organisations, many Muslim groups and most of the intellectuals, and that the BJP criticised it as an unnecessary concession and ‘appeasement’ of the minority community.

Q. What incident does the chapter’s ‘Do you know?’ box record?

Answer: It records an incident dated November 28 1858, when Nihang Sikhs captured the Janmabhoomi site and performed Puja and Havan, before being forcibly ousted by the colonial administration.

Q. What does the chapter’s closing discussion box ask you to consider about democracy in India?

Answer: It points out that around the time of India’s independence, many other countries also became independent and adopted democracy. The chapter states that India emerged as a mature democracy playing a great role in promoting social equality and national development, while the same has not been the case in some of those countries. On that basis it asks you to discuss the factors that have enabled democracy to thrive in India.

Q. Describe the five developments at the close of the 1980s that the chapter says were to make a long-lasting impact on Indian politics.

Answer: 1. The defeat of the Congress in 1989. The party that had won 415 seats in 1984 was reduced to 197. It came back to power after the mid-term elections of 1991, but 1989 marked the end of the ‘Congress system’.
2. The rise of the ‘Mandal issue’. The new National Front government decided in 1990 to implement the Mandal Commission’s recommendation that jobs in central government be reserved for the OBCs, which led to violent ‘anti-Mandal’ protests.
3. A radically different economic policy. The structural adjustment programme, or the new economic reforms, started by Rajiv Gandhi and first very visible in 1991. They were widely criticised, but every government since has continued to follow them.
4. The Ram Janmabhoomi dispute entering politics. The centuries old legal and political dispute over the temple at Ayodhya began influencing Indian politics, and the movement transformed the direction of the discourse on secularism and democracy.
5. The assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991. He was assassinated by a Sri Lankan Tamil linked to the LTTE while on an election campaign tour in Tamil Nadu. The Congress emerged as the single largest party in the 1991 elections and chose Narsimha Rao as Prime Minister.

Q. Trace the emergence of the BJP as a significant force in post-Emergency politics.

Answer: In the aftermath of the Emergency the Bharatiya Jana Sangh merged with the Janata Party. After the Janata Party fell and broke up, the supporters of the erstwhile Jana Sangh formed the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1980. Initially the BJP adopted a broader political platform than the Jana Sangh had, embracing ‘Gandhian’ Socialism’ along with cultural nationalism as its ideology, but it did not get much success in the elections held in 1984. After 1986 the party began to emphasise nationalism as the core of its ideology and pursued the politics of ‘Hindutva’ for political mobilisation, with the Shah Bano case and the Ayodhya issue becoming central to its politics. It then consolidated its position in the elections of 1991 and 1996, emerged as the largest party in 1996 and was invited to form the government, though it could not secure a majority. It came to power leading a coalition from May 1998 to June 1999, was re-elected in October 1999 under Atal Behari Vajpayee, and that government completed its full term. It later won a majority of its own, with 282 seats in 2014 and 303 seats in 2019.

Q. Explain the rise of the Other Backward Classes as a political force in this period.

Answer: The OBCs are the administrative category of communities other than the SC and ST who suffer from educational and social backwardness, also called the backward castes. Support for the Congress among many sections of them had declined, which created space for non-Congress parties. Their rise first found political expression at the national level in the Janata Party government of 1977, several of whose constituents, such as the Bharatiya Kranti Dal and the Samyukta Socialist Party, had a powerful rural base among sections of the OBCs. In the 1980s the Janata Dal brought together a similar combination. The National Front government’s decision to implement the Mandal Commission recommendations shaped this politics further: the intense national debate for and against reservation in jobs made people from OBC communities more aware of this identity and helped those who wanted to mobilise them. Many parties emerged seeking better opportunities for OBCs in education and employment, and raising the question of the share of power. Their claim was that since the OBCs formed a large segment of Indian society, it was only democratic that they should get adequate representation in administration and their due share of political power.

Q. What was the Mandal Commission, and what did it recommend?

Answer: Reservations for the OBC had existed in the southern States since the 1960s but the policy was not operative in the north Indian States. The demand was strongly raised during the Janata Party government of 1977-79, with Karpoori Thakur, then Chief Minister of Bihar, a pioneer in this direction. Following this the central government appointed a Commission in 1978. Because this was the second such commission since Independence it was officially the Second Backward Classes Commission, and popularly the Mandal Commission after its Chairperson, Bindeshwari Prasad Mandal.
It was set up to investigate the extent of educational and social backwardness among various sections of Indian society, to recommend ways of identifying these ‘backward classes’, and to recommend ways in which the backwardness could be ended. It gave its recommendations in 1980, by which time the Janata government had fallen. It advised that ‘backward classes’ should be understood to mean ‘backward castes’, since many castes other than the Scheduled Castes were also treated as low in the caste hierarchy. Its survey found these castes had a very low presence both in educational institutions and in employment in public services, and it therefore recommended reserving 27 per cent of seats in educational institutions and government jobs. It also made many other recommendations, such as land reform.
In August 1990 the National Front government decided to implement the recommendation on jobs in the central government and its undertakings. The decision sparked agitations and violent protests in many cities of north India and was challenged in the Supreme Court in what came to be known as the Indira Sawhney case, after one of the petitioners. In November 1992 the Supreme Court upheld the government’s decision. The chapter records that the policy of reservation for OBCs now has the support of all the major political parties of the country.

Q. Describe the Ayodhya issue as the chapter presents it, and how it says the issue was resolved.

Answer: The chapter describes the issue as deeply rooted in the socio-cultural and political history of the country, involving different perspectives from various stakeholders, and turning on contentions about the birth place of Shri Ram, one of the most holy religious sites, and its legal ownership. It records a 500-year long history starting from 1528, marked by numerous conflicts that are documented in the Lucknow, Barabanki and Faizabad district Gazetteers. A three-dome structure was built at the site in 1528, with a visible display of Hindu symbols and relics in its interior and exterior, and the chapter says the issue therefore got linked to national pride in India’s ancient civilization. The dispute became a prolonged legal battle and the structure was sealed in 1949 with the onset of court proceedings. In 1986 the Faizabad (now Ayodhya) district court ruled to unlock the structure and allow people to worship there. Shilaanyas for the temple was done but further construction remained prohibited. The Hindu community felt its concerns about the birth place were overlooked while the Muslim community sought assurance of its possession over the structure, tensions heightened over ownership rights, and both communities desired a fair resolution. In 1992, following the demolition of the structure, the chapter records that some critics contended that it presented a substantial challenge to the principles of Indian democracy.
The chapter says the issue was resolved through a number of democratic and legal procedures including court hearings, mediation attempts and popular movements, and finally by a 5-0 verdict of a constitutional bench of the Supreme Court on November 9, 2019, reached on evidence such as archaeological excavations and historical records. The verdict allotted the disputed site to the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teertha Kshetra Trust for the construction of a Ram temple and directed the concerned government to allot an appropriate site for the construction of a Mosque to the Sunni Central Waqf Board. The chapter concludes that in this way democracy gives room for conflict resolution in a plural society, upholding the inclusive spirit of the Constitution.

Q. What are the four elements of the consensus that the chapter says has emerged among most political parties?

Answer: First, agreement on new economic policies. Many groups are opposed to them, but most political parties support them, believing that these policies would lead the country to prosperity and a status of economic power in the world.
Second, acceptance of the political and social claims of the backward castes. All political parties now support reservation of seats for the ‘backward classes’ in education and employment, and are willing to ensure that the OBCs get an adequate share of power.
Third, acceptance of the role of State level parties in governance of the country. The distinction between State level and national level parties is fast becoming less important, and State level parties have shared power at the national level and played a central role in the country’s politics of the last twenty years or so.
Fourth, emphasis on pragmatic considerations rather than ideological positions, and political alliances without ideological agreement. Coalition politics has shifted the focus from ideological differences to power sharing arrangements. The chapter’s own example is that most parties of the NDA did not agree with the ‘Hindutva’ ideology of the BJP, yet came together to form a government and remained in power for a full term.

Q. State the main issues in Indian politics in the period after 1989. What different configurations of political parties did these differences lead to?

Answer: The main issues.
1. The end of Congress dominance and the arrival of coalition politics. The 1989 defeat ended the ‘Congress system’ without any single party replacing the Congress. No party won a clear majority in any Lok Sabha election from 1989 till 2014, and the Centre has had eleven governments since, all of them coalition or minority governments.
2. The Mandal issue and the political rise of the OBCs. The National Front government’s decision of August 1990 to reserve central government jobs for OBCs divided supporters and opponents of reservation and made OBC identity a mobilising force.
3. The new economic policies. The structural adjustment programme, begun by Rajiv Gandhi and very visible from 1991, was widely criticised by movements and organisations even as successive governments continued it.
4. Politics based on religious identity, and the debate on secularism and democracy. The Shah Bano case, the rise of the politics of ‘Hindutva’ and the Ayodhya issue made this the other long-term development of the period.
The configurations these led to.
In 1989 the National Front, an alliance of the Janata Dal and other regional parties, formed a government supported from outside by two diametrically opposite groups, the BJP and the Left Front, both of which wanted to keep the Congress out of power. In 1996 the United Front, again Janata Dal plus regional parties, was supported by the Congress instead, because the Congress and the Left now wanted to keep the BJP out. The BJP led a coalition from May 1998 to June 1999 and the NDA from October 1999, which completed a full term under Atal Behari Vajpayee. In 2004 the Congress too entered coalitions in a big way and the UPA, supported by the Left Front, came to power, returning in 2009. The trend changed in 2014, when the BJP won 282 seats on its own, and again in 2019 with 303, though the chapter notes that even then the recognition of coalition politics remains relevant.

Q. “In the new era of coalition politics, political parties are not aligning or re-aligning on the basis of ideology.” What arguments would you put forward to support or oppose this statement?

Answer: Arguments supporting the statement.
The chapter’s fourth element of the new consensus is exactly this: an emphasis on pragmatic considerations rather than ideological positions, and political alliances without ideological agreement. It says coalition politics has shifted the focus of political parties from ideological differences to power sharing arrangements, and gives its own example: most parties of the NDA did not agree with the ‘Hindutva’ ideology of the BJP, yet came together to form a government and remained in power for a full term. The alignments of 1989 and 1996 point the same way. In 1989 the BJP and the Left Front, two diametrically opposite groups, supported the same National Front government because both wanted to keep the Congress out of power. In 1996 the Left went on supporting a non-Congress government while the Congress supported it too, this time because both wanted to keep the BJP out. The chapter itself calls this a sign of how unstable the political equations were.
Arguments opposing the statement.
Even in this period the alliances were not free of content. The competition of the nineties is described by the chapter as divided between a coalition led by the BJP and a coalition led by the Congress, which suggests two stable poles rather than a free-for-all. The rise of the OBC and Dalit parties was driven by a definite claim, that groups forming a large segment of society should get adequate representation in administration and their due share of political power. And the consensus itself is a set of positions, not the absence of them: agreement on new economic policies, acceptance of the claims of the backward castes, and acceptance of the role of State level parties are all substantive commitments that every major party now shares.
A balanced conclusion. Alliances in this period were formed more for power sharing than for ideological agreement, but the choices the parties make within those alliances still rest on the broad consensus the chapter describes.

Q. In spite of the decline of Congress dominance, the Congress party continues to influence politics in the country. Do you agree? Give reasons.

Answer: Yes, and the chapter gives the reasons.
1. It remained an important party and governed the most. The chapter says plainly that the Congress “remained an important party and ruled the country more than any other party even in this period since 1989”. What it lost was centrality, not importance.
2. It came back to power quickly. Reduced to 197 seats in 1989, it improved its performance and returned to power soon after the mid-term elections of 1991, when it emerged as the single largest party and Narsimha Rao became Prime Minister.
3. It decided who governed even when it did not. In 1996 the United Front government was supported by the Congress, and the caption in the chapter records Sitaram Kesri withdrawing that support from Deve Gowda’s government. A party that can make and unmake a government from outside is still shaping politics.
4. It led a governing coalition again. In 2004 the Congress entered into coalitions in a big way, the NDA was defeated, and the UPA came to power with Left Front support. This was also the partial revival of the Congress, whose seats increased once again after 1991. It returned in 2009, rising from 145 seats in 2004 to 206, with Dr. Manmohan Singh sworn in as Prime Minister for a second term.
5. It remains one of the two poles of competition. The chapter asks students to compare the electoral performances of the Congress and the BJP precisely because the two were engaged in a tough competition, and notes that their combined vote most of the time added up to more than fifty per cent.
Where the decline is real. The Congress fell to 44 seats in 2014 and 52 in 2019, while the BJP won a majority of its own in both. So the honest answer is that the Congress no longer dominates, but it has continued to influence politics as a party of government, as a supporter of other governments, and as one of the two poles around which alliances form.

Q. Many people think that a two-party system is required for successful democracy. Drawing from India’s experience of the last 30 years, write about the advantages the present party system in India has.

Answer: 1. It represents more of Indian society. The nineties saw the emergence of powerful parties and movements representing the Dalits and the backward castes, and many of them represented powerful regional assertion as well. A two-party system would have left these claims without a vehicle. The chapter records that the OBC parties’ claim was a democratic one: that a large segment of society should get adequate representation in administration and its due share of political power.
2. It brought the States into national governance. The chapter’s third element of the new consensus is the acceptance of the role of State level parties in governance of the country. The distinction between State level and national level parties is fast becoming less important, and regional parties played a crucial role in forming ruling alliances. Any government in this phase could be formed only with the participation or support of many regional parties.
3. It made a wider social base possible for one party too. The BSP began as a small party supported largely by Dalit voters in Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, achieved a breakthrough in Uttar Pradesh in 1989 and the 1991 elections, and has since expanded its support to various other social groups. The chapter calls this the first time in independent India that a party supported mainly by Dalit voters had achieved this kind of political success.
4. Coalitions have proved they can be stable. The NDA government formed in 1999 completed its full term, and the UPA government formed in 2004 completed its term despite the Left parties withdrawing support in July 2008 over the Indo-US nuclear deal.
5. It rests on a working agreement, not permanent conflict. The chapter argues that in the midst of severe competition a consensus has emerged among most parties on economic policy, on the claims of the backward castes, on the role of State level parties, and on pragmatic power sharing. Even after the BJP won majorities of its own in 2014 and 2019, the chapter notes that the recognition of coalition politics is still relevant.
6. It keeps new demands entering politics. Even as parties act within this consensus, popular movements and organisations are putting poverty, displacement, minimum wages, livelihood and social security on the political agenda, and voicing issues of justice and democracy in terms of class, caste, gender and regions.

Q. Trace the era of coalitions in Indian politics from 1989 onwards, naming the governments, and explain what changed in 2014 and 2019.

Answer: How it began. The elections of 1989 defeated the Congress but gave no other party a majority. The Congress, though the largest party, decided to sit in the opposition. The National Front, an alliance of the Janata Dal and some other regional parties, formed a coalition government with outside support from the BJP and the Left Front, neither of which joined it. This began an era of a multi-party system in which one or two parties no longer got most of the votes or seats.
The governments the chapter names. The National Front in 1989; the United Front in 1996 and 1997, this time supported by the Congress and not by the BJP; the BJP-led coalition in 1998, which held office from May 1998 to June 1999; the NDA in 1999, re-elected in October 1999 under Atal Behari Vajpayee, which completed its full term; and the UPA in 2004 and 2009. Since 1989 there have been eleven governments at the Centre, all of them either coalition governments or minority governments supported from outside.
Why it happened. The chapter treats this as a long-term trend rather than an accident. The Congress had itself once been a coalition of different interests and social strata, which gave rise to the term ‘Congress system’. Since the late 1960s various sections had been leaving the Congress fold and forming their own parties, and many regional parties rose after 1977. These developments weakened the Congress without enabling any single party to replace it.
What changed in 2014 and 2019. No single party had secured a clear majority in any Lok Sabha election from 1989 till 2014. In the 16th Lok Sabha elections of 2014 the BJP under Narendra Modi won 282 seats on its own, becoming the first party to gain a single party majority after 30 years, and the chapter calls 2014 a proverbial watershed moment. Even so, the BJP chose to form the NDA government with its coalition partners. In 2019 the BJP again emerged victorious with 303 seats of its own. The chapter’s own conclusion is that even when the BJP is getting a full majority, the recognition of coalition politics is still relevant, and that the party system has changed almost dramatically from what it was till the seventies.

Q. Explain the political rise of the Dalits in this period, and what the chapter says about the relationship between Dalit politics and OBC politics.

Answer: The organisation comes first. The 1980s saw the rise of the political organisation of the Dalits. In 1978 the Backward and Minority Communities Employees Federation (BAMCEF) was formed. The chapter is careful to say that this was not an ordinary trade union of government employees: it took a strong position in favour of political power to the ‘bahujan’, that is the SC, ST, OBC and minorities.
From BAMCEF to the BSP. Out of this emerged the Dalit Shoshit Samaj Sangharsh Samiti and later the Bahujan Samaj Party, under the leadership of Kanshi Ram. The chapter’s note on him names him founder of BAMCEF, DS-4 and finally the BSP in 1984, calls him an astute political strategist who regarded political power as the master key to attaining social equality, and credits him with the Dalit resurgence in the north Indian States.
The breakthrough. The BSP began as a small party supported largely by Dalit voters in Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, but in 1989 and the 1991 elections it achieved a breakthrough in Uttar Pradesh. The chapter calls this the first time in independent India that a political party supported mainly by Dalit voters had achieved this kind of political success.
Why it could work. Under Kanshi Ram the BSP was envisaged as an organisation based on pragmatic politics. It derived confidence from the fact that the Bahujans, the SC, ST, OBC and religious minorities, constituted the majority of the population and were a formidable political force on the strength of their numbers. Since then the BSP has become a major political player in the State and has been in government on more than one occasion. Its strongest support still comes from Dalit voters, but it has expanded its support to various other social groups.
Dalit politics and OBC politics. The chapter’s own summing up is that in many parts of India, Dalit politics and OBC politics have developed independently and often in competition with each other. They are two separate assertions of the same period, not one movement.