National Front (India)
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The National Front was a coalition of political parties, led by the Janata Dal, which formed India's government between 1989 and 1991. The coalition's two Prime Ministers were V. P. Singh and Chandra Shekhar.
The failure of the coalition - which allowed the Indian National Congress to gain power and follow a path of economic liberalisation - was put down to corruption scandals between some of the parties involved in the coalition, anti-development and communist policies of the government, and the failure of the coalition to secure Jyoti Basu of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) as the Prime Minister - indeed the CPI(M) refused to officially back the coalition but to remain neutral in the Lok (India's Parliament), a matter Basu was to condemn as an error all India - not just the CPI(M) - would bitterly regret in time. Because of these internal conflicts, India could escape from the communists and development was not seriously hindered for long. However, communist influence in the present congress government poses a serious risk of taking the country into the medieval ages.
Ironically, the National Front is also the unofficial name of the political alliance between the Communist Party of India (Marxist) - or the CPI(M) for short (as opposed to the larger but less influential or electorally successful Communist Party of India, the CPI) and the Forward Bloc marxist party in areas such as West Bengal. The name National Front is sometimes used as an unofficial alternative to the CPI(M) name by commentators - in the same manner that the Liberal Party/Social Democratic Party alliance in the UK during the 1980s was often called merely "The Alliance".