People are now more aware, they resent being treated like mere vote banks. They think, and think hard. Only then the Brahmins of Uttar Pradesh turn the clock back on 5,000 years of reverse prejudice to consciously elect an entirely unapologetic Dalit. Mayawati had the political intellect to sense this change, to understand this impatience, the mind of this new voter who is no longer shackled by the hatreds and insecurities of the past. She was helped along by her much older, more experienced opponents who were only trying to revive the magic of their past. They failed to see that the voter has now moved on — he looks ahead rather than behind.

• The third point, and the old political class may still be reluctant to see it, is that the voter, increasingly, gives clear verdicts. That is why, in state after state, the column “others” is being emptied out. In Punjab, Congress lost despite its vote going up by nearly five per cent. That is because “others,” including the Left parties and the BSP lost much more and the Akali-BJP combine got a bigger share of it.

In Uttar Pradesh also, the “others” have nearly halved, the Left wiped out of even its tiny foot hold of four seats despite Mulayam’s support. Clear verdicts are now becoming as strong a phenomenon as anti-incumbency. And while the phenomenon began sometime in 2003, the real turning point was the second Bihar election of 2005, when the same electorate which had given an unclear verdict just a few months earlier, cleared all doubts and brought about decisive change.

... contd.