Till the mid-2000s, it was fashionable for analysts to say that the days of big, pan-India political parties were numbered: the future belonged to regional parties who would come together to form coalition governments in New Delhi. After all, from 1991, no big party had a majority on its own: Narasimha Rao ran a government with other parties' support, as did Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the first UPA government.