It got support because it came to represent the movement for a homeland of Muslims. Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who led the party during the confrontation with the British, enunciated the demand for Pakistan to fulfil the aspirations of Muslims. Once Pakistan was created, the League began to slide. Jinnah, who had advocated religion as the basis for nationhood, too tried to change the party to face the realities. He wanted the Hindu minority to participate in governance. He said: "You are free, you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed - that has nothing to do with the business of the State.

We are all citizens and equal citizens of one State. Now, I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in course of time, Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State." Gandhi was assassinated before he could put India on road to economic development.

Jawaharlal Nehru, his disciple, tried to have Gandhi's dream of economic independence come true. But the Chinese aggression in 1962 on the one hand and his dynastic ambition on the other, made India lose its way. Jinnah too died a disappointed man.

Again, the creation of Bangladesh was the culmination of a national movement. The Awami League was the party and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, its leader. Once people achieved independence, they began to think less of the Awami League and more of economic development. The party failed to realise it. Military coups retarded the normal process. Otherwise, the Awami League may have seen a change in its fortune many years earlier. People, inspired by democracy, had to give the Awami League a chance because it had been ousted by the gun. The Opposition parties can pull down the League but cannot keep Sheikh Mujibur Rahman from going down in history as Gandhi and Jinnah have in their respective countries.

The Nepalese Congress has come a long way from the ethos of struggle against the monarchy. It has got away from the fact that the movement made the party. It is another matter that the purpose of the movement has been lost on the Nepalese Congress.

More recently, people rallied behind the Janata Party in 1977 because there was a revolt against the autocracy of Indira Gandhi during the Emergency (1975-77). The movement against authoritarianism brought different viewpoints on one platform and made up the party. But when its members quarrelled among themselves, people brought back Indira Gandhi and a proven leader, however dictatorial. Parochial in character, the Bhartiya Janata Party emerged after it had initiated a movement on building a temple at the disputed site of Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid. The stir polarised the society but it paid dividends to the BJP as the party consolidated its Hindu votes. Following the break-up of the VP Singh government and the airing of pent-up feelings against the Congress, people also saw in the BJP a party that they had not tried before.

What happened in the case of the Congress, the Muslim League, the Awami League and the Nepalese Cognress was a sense of disillusionment. They ceased to reflect the ethos of movements which gave them shape. This has had disastrous consequences. People have become cynical, they have lost faith in political parties, even in the system. Since the parties have lost their elan, they are confined to parts of their country or the states. In India, no party has even one third of the strength in the 545-member Lok Sabha.

Coalition politics was born out of necessity. Three decades ago, when Socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia, pleaded for a coalition of political parties, his purpose was to break up the monolithic Congress. He succeeded in UP but the experiment failed because of the allies' conflicting ambitions. The first coalition at the Centre was in 1989-90 when VP Singh was chosen as the Prime Minister. It resembled the 1977 Janata government which was also a coalition but in a different way. Several political parties - whether the Jana Sangh or the Janata Dal and the Socialists - merged into one party, the Janata. The only difference in 1990 was the constituents retained their separate identity.

The government lasted not more than a year because the BJP, one of the constituents, felt threatened when the Mandal Commission recommendations on reservations for the backward were implemented. The BJP suspected that its vote bank in the lower castes was sought to be eroded. It brought the kamandal (a vessel for carrying water to perform Hindu rites) to the fore.

Similar fronts came into being at the Centre under Deve Gowda and I K Gujral. But nothing strung them together except office or convenience. The ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), headed by the BJP, is an extension of the same idea.

At their special conference in Trivandrum, the communists have renewed the demand for a "third front" to bring together "progressive, secular and democratic" parties on one platform. It is a laudable idea but it may fail because of the same fallacies which were spotted in 1979 and in 1990.

Leaving out either of the two main parties - the Congress and the BJP - may not help constitute a firm alternative. The desire to pull down the NDA, however intense, cannot bring into being a party or a front that the people need. What will be the difference between the new front and the NDA? Apart from the rhetoric, both sides have an array of communalists, casteists and the corrupt. There has to be an all-India movement, either for the restoration of the rule of law or for economic upliftment. Such a movement may throw up a party and new faces which are clean. Another way out is that all secular parties, including the CPI and the CPI(M), dissolve themselves and constitute a new party and include in itsuch NGOs which do not receive foreign funds for their operation.

It is true that there is a sense of frustration and depression in India and the old buoyancy of spirit is not to be found at a time when enthusiasm and hard work are most needed. But the existing parties cannot evoke the right response because they are too involved in power politics. Again, it is the movement which can sweep them aside.