On 26 January 2000, India marked the fiftieth anniversary of its Constitution. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA), a coalition of 22 political parties that formed the Union (federal) government in September 1999, chose to mark the milestone in an unusual way. On February 22nd, it established a National Commission of recognised experts of various political persuasions whose explicit purpose was to review the workings of the Constitution. The body was set up to consider ways in which the Constitution might be reformed in order to serve the interests of the country in light of its present imperatives. One particular issue was vigorously debated in public discourse: the instability of the Centre. The reason for this was quite simple. Since 1989, India had conducted five general elections, none of which produced a singleparty majority Union government. None of the eight multiparty coalition governments which emerged – with the exception of the minority Congress administration under Narasimha Rao (1991–6) which engaged in horsetrading and vote-buying to gain a parliamentary majority in 1993 – survived for the mandated five-year term in office. Simply put, they either broke into rival factions during their tenure in power or succumbed to political blackmail exerted by parties providing external parliamentary support. Given this, the issue of governmental instability and its presumed negative effect upon the formulation, execution and implementation of public policy (which is contested by certain studies of economic liberalisation), assumed great importance in the minds of many observers and citizens.