As the decade of the 1990s came to an end, the once unipolar polity came to have several distinct poles. There was the Congress, declining but still significant, and the BJP, rising but by no means dominant. These were the two so-to-say ‘national’ parties. Meanwhile, there was also a third pole, this constituted by a variety of caste- and region-based parties which neither the Congress nor the BJP could ignore.
