Socio-economic and political context of 1967 …

The socio economic context of 1967 elections:

• This period was fraught with grave economic crisis resulting from successive failure of monsoons, widespread droughts, decline in agricultural production, serious food shortage, depletion of foreign exchange reserve, and drop in industrial production combined with sharp rise in military expenditure and diversion of resources from planning and economic development. 
• The economic situation triggered off price rise. People started protesting against increase in prices of essential commodities, food scarcity and growing unemployment and overall economic condition of the country. Moreover the communist and the socialist launched struggles for greater equality. 
• Politically a wave of ‘non congressism” swept all across the country. Parties opposed to congress realized that the division of their votes kept Congress in power. Thus parties that were entirely different and disparate in their programmers’ and ideology got together to form anti Congress fronts in different states.