The purpose of the coalition formed should be to add different perspectives to the issue being addressed and lead to a well informed decision, one that would be more productive for the masses. A coalition should essentially have a shared mandate and provide a broader perspective and a better solution towards any problem. Due to this characteristic of a coalition government, it is often termed to be better than a minority government as it provides a shared mandate and multiple opinions in times of national crisis and matters of national importance. For efficient functioning of the government, individual parties must compromise on their ideologies and come to a common consensus, for failure to do so will lead to political slowdown. Also, many a times, smaller parties that are a part of the coalition are inexperienced at handling power effectively. A local example for this would be the first coalition government that was formed in India, under the leadership of Prime Minister Morarji Desai, from 24th March, 1977 to 15th July, 1979 which did not even live long enough to complete its full term, thus proving the point that it may often lead to policy paralysis. Even the last government formed, led by Dr. Manmohan Singh was the United Progressive Alliance, was a coalition government, which slowed the economic growth of the country, led to ineffective administration, …show more content…
A single party majority may misuse its power due its hubris of having won the elections single handedly, and when that happens, it will become egotistical of its actions, and will perish the growth of the government and the nation. A great example of this would be the autocratic regime of Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi during the years 1966 to 1977 who, during her tenure, not only imposed an unwanted emergency but also took control of the media by using her authority. After the revocation of the emergency and the general elections in the year 1977, the single party majority had fallen and Morarji Desai had become the Prime Minister of India, by leading the Janta party, however, his coalition government too, failed. Thus we see that neither coalition governments nor single party majorities are the ones that prevail, but efficient governments that do.
In conclusion, I think it would be apt to use the clichéd statement, “Excess of everything is bad” to describe both coalition and single party majorities. What we need, is a check and balance system to make sure that regardless of the nature of the government, power is not misused. What we need is Education for the masses