The sceptic could ask: does replacing one form of political egotism with another really offer anything new? Is politics to be cynically reduced to alternative megalomanias or availabilities of corruption? But politics is about small slippages, little revisions with larger consequences. The presence or possibility of a Mayawati could teach the Congress to be Congress again. What we have now is a party which, having done a poor job of imitating its former self now, thankfully, does a poorer job imitating the BJP. It could trigger new dimensions in civil society allowing NGOs, trade unions and marginal groups to forge a civil society coalition if not a party-based one. Otherwise Gujarat is doomed to a univocal politics, where the vibrancy of Modi’s Gujarat is like a drum. The louder it beats the more hollow it sounds.

The writer is a social scientist currently based in Ahmedabad