Coalition Conundrum

The recent Confidence Motion on the UPA Government has once again brought forth the pitfalls of Coalition Politics and how the political Shylocks can demand their pound of flesh during the political and financial crises.
While the coalitions may offer political stability during the fractured verdict, the chemistry of coalitions makes the governance most recalcitrant. The coalitions in the Indian context are not principled based on any common ideology. The lone agenda is to grab power come what may. The political parties have no qualms in discarding their ideology for a share in the power.
The most referred coalition model of successive coalition governments in Kerala have done irreversible damage – in education, economy, industry, body polity etc - to the state. More often than not, the chief administrator of the government is not able to run his writ even in the crucial affairs affecting the state. Each cluster of the coalition functions like an interest group and pursues only their narrow agenda – both declared and undeclared. Resultantly, the so-called Common Minimum Programme remains on paper for the hoi polloi to see, and the interest groups will be busy clandestinely ensuring their interests through clever political and governmental moves.
Even in the present dispensation the resources of the Centre and the annual budget allocations were not distributed even in an even pattern, leave alone any equitable distribution. The step motherly treatment in the bestowing largesse like issuing new industrial licences, allotting new train routes, electrification of lines, starting new ventures with FDI, starting new IITs was meted out to the non-home states by the ministers of the home states. This has set a dangerous pattern for a republic like India where the regional imbalances and disparities in the economic growth are disturbingly alarming.
Added to this are the political manoeuvres of the regional parties in demanding their pound of flesh at times of political crises like Petroleum Pricing, Sub-prime Crisis, political stalemate during Nuclear Deal et al. The regional parties have little to worry about the implications of any decisions taken at national level and vice versa. In short, it is untenable to say that coalition governments are suitable dispensation for the republic presently or in future.