Between the unravelling of the social coalitions within the Congress and the emergence of the NF and the beginning of the coalition era, lies the critical period of the Janata Party (JP) government that took power in the aftermath of the Emergency in 1977. This was a short-lived and largely failed experiment—except that it did, during its brief tenure, manage to undo some of the wrongs of the Emergency. The JP, in a way, tried to replicate the coalitional impulse within the party-form in the way the Congress had once embodied it. This was effected through the merger of parties as diverse as the Bharatiya Lok Dal, the Swatantra Party, the Socialists, Congress (O), Congress for Democracy and the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS). Unlike the Congress, however, which had evolved in a coalitional form over decades during the anticolonial struggle and continued after Independence, leaders of the JP seemed incapable of being able to think beyond their own ambitions and the immediate exigencies of power.