You could safely call it a “Bees Saal Baad” moment for Uttar Pradesh politics. In the politics of India’s largest state, 1989 was a big moment. UP had 85 parliamentary seats then, and the arrogance to claim that, like the Lucknow or the Howrah Mail, the way to New Delhi ran through its capital.

That was the year when the banyan tree, the Congress, lost out; the party that could once get upper castes (more than 20 per cent of UP’s voters, among the highest in the country), Muslims (another 18.5 per cent) and Dalits (16.5 per cent) and several others on one platform, found itself seriously fumbling. As political scientist Zoya Hasan put it then, its efforts at the Shilanyas (memorably conducted by Buta Singh) and then drawing the line when it came to temple creation “alarmed Muslims and disappointed Hindus”. In the vortex of communal polarisation came the socialists, dressed up as torch-bearers for the Other Backward Classes, first as Janata Dal and then Samajwadi Party, who stole the OBCs away from the Congress and ended up creating one of the biggest spaces in post-Independence politics for smaller parties to occupy. The BJP too was a net gainer. There were also stirrings of the BSP, which in 1989 got three MPs and secured 2.07 per cent of the vote.

Twenty years later, UP is again at a crossroad. There are at least three big shifts on the ground which might give prospective pollsters the biggest reasons for not trying to “poll” trends, and just exhale when the vote is counted in May.

... contd.