So anybody who now goes to the polls saying, give me 20-30-40 seats so I can be king-maker, so I can hold a coalition by its jugular or whatever, is asking for the boot. People no longer want to vote for the spoilers. This trend will only strengthen now and any party, or coalition, that does not appreciate it, will pay for it in 2009.

As the Uttar Pradesh picture became clearer by Friday afternoon, my first caller was Sachin Pilot. Now what does this say for the theory you been putting forward that the voter is moving towards the Centre, he asked? If the voter moves away from both Congress and BJP, is it a move to the Centre, or the fringes?

Good question.

And the answer, as they say, is blowing in the Uttar Pradesh wind. The voter will not necessarily choose only between the two national parties. He is moving towards the centre of the political, ideological spectrum, not towards one party or the other. That middle-of-the-road, inclusivist, positive, forward-looking politics defines his new outlook and echoes this new, aspirational upsurge in — and I repeat — a rapidly urbanising, cosmopolitan India. Now think about which party or leader presented a campaign or an agenda that passed this four-point test: centrist, inclusivist, positive, aspirational.

If the answer is Mayawati and BSP, I rest my case.

In the second part of my Limousine Liberals’ diary from the Uttar Pradesh campaign, I had concluded by saying there is change, and it is acquiring a momentum that will redefine our political landscape in a way that we move away from the politics of grievance to the politics of aspiration (Common Maximum Programme). In the course of the same, somewhat wishful theorising, I had confessed that I see this change but it’s not time yet to say QED.

... contd.