The wheel of politics in the Hindi heartland was duly noted as having turned, when in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections the RJD/ LJP combine got a drubbing in Bihar, and in Uttar Pradesh the BSP and SP were suitably chastened. The general feeling was that the parties that had made hay on the post-Mandal OBC consolidation (in Mayawati’s case, the Ambedkarite consolidation of Dalits) had run out of magic potion, and now that the deal was to “develop” the states, parties which stood for that would win.

However, events in UP and Bihar are now threatening to reveal more complexity — something still in progress, before assembly elections due in Bihar next year, and in UP in 2012.

First, in both states, while it seems to have been generally understood that the Mandal tide may have ebbed, the “M-Y” (Muslim-Yadav) factor which helped the Samajwadi Party and the RJD is cracking, and the battle seems to be for castes and communities absolutely at the bottom of the social ladder. In UP, the contest is for Dalits, while in Bihar for the extremely backward castes, so far out of the pale of the political battle, as they were hard to campaign to, to organise and keep close. Thus there are new and unique problems parties are encountering, paradoxes and shadows of the old way of doing things, of new communities being stuffed in retrofitted bottles.

UP’s case is straightforward. Twenty years ago, there was the old Congress formula which served them well, putting the upper castes (a larger proportion of the population than in other states), Muslims and Dalits together, creating a reasonably “stable” polity. However, the forces unleashed by

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