For Uttam Pradesh

The Indian Express/CNN-IBN pre-poll survey of UP, details of which we carry in today’s edition, should be read with, as they say, a sense of growing alarm by the BJP and Congress. If these trends hold, elections in one of India’s least developed states, which accounts for one-sixth of India’s population and therefore drags down all per capita indicators, are likely to move further away from the electoral trend of the reemergence of a rough bipolarity. This was visible in Punjab and Uttarakhand recently. Votes, it seems, can once again coalesce around the Congress and the BJP. In Punjab what psephologists call ‘others’ performed poorly. Remember the Left used to be strong in Punjab and the BSP has tried valiantly to exploit the state’s large dalit population? In the UP survey, ‘others’ are doing quite well, better than the Congress and only marginally worse than the BJP. If the two big parties lose more ground, it is quite likely that however cumbersome the process of the next government formation in UP, it may have one certainty: neither the Congress nor the BJP will have any role to play.

This is not a matter to be understood only in the context of the grand complexity of UP politics. This is a matter that affects India’s future, because UP is so big a part of India. Minus any role for the national parties, UP is not likely to change the terms of its political or policy discourse. True, regional parties like the BJD in Orissa and the Akalis in Punjab have refashioned their agendas. But, by present evidence, the SP and the BSP are not close to such a turnaround. Even the tentative thesis that both may have understood the limits of identity politics — Mayawati wooing Brahmins, is everyone’s favourite example — will not hold if, after a group vote seeking campaign, results reinforce SP/BSP’s position as the top two, with the BJP a distant third and the Congress a dismal fourth.

Clearly, therefore, the Congress and the BJP need to campaign differently. There’s still time to take an unabashedly positive, all-inclusive political-economic message. There’s still time for the Congress to abandon attempts to rediscover bits of the old electoral patchwork quilt. There’s still time for the BJP to stop deluding itself that Kalyan Singh is reminding some voters of 1989-92 ‘magic’. BJP and Congress strategists may argue that in the face of the SP’s and BSP’s politics, non-sectarian, positive messages won’t work. People said the same thing about Bihar. In any case, not even trying is dreadfully poor politics, a cop out — one that will cost UP and India.