The National Front was a coalition of political parties, led by the Janata Dal, which formed India's government between 1989 and 1991. The coalitions two Prime Ministers were V. P. Singh and Chandra Shekhar

The failure of the coalition - which allowed the far right Hindu supremacist BJP to gain power - was put down to corruption scandals between some of the parties involved in the coalition, but more fatally by 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 a error all India - not just the CPI(M) - would bitterly regret in time. The rise of the BJP to power & the nation being brought to the brink of nuclear war with Pakistan proved him tragically right.

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".

The use of the term National Front for India's communists may cause confusion - particularly in the UK where the NF name is for a far-right anti-non white party! The reason behind it stems from the name of the original newspaper of India's communists, started back in the 1920's - which was the first newspaper in the nation that was created by members of the native populations rather than all or part of the white British ruling classes.