Tarmendra Singh Yadav owns a small shop in the kasba of Shuklaganj, district Unnao, on Kanpur’s edge. His family has traditionally supported the Congress, he says. Even today, his old mother expresses her helplessness. Inside the polling booth her finger assumes a life of its own, she says, it presses the button on the Congress symbol. But Yadav and the rest of his family have switched loyalties to the SP, primarily because “The Congress won’t even acknowledge my vote, while the SP does that at least. Why would I waste my vote by supporting a party that won’t even believe I voted for it?”

Despite the chatter about its revival in UP, the Congress is really a bit player in this story. The main protagonists are still the SP and the BSP. Tarmendra Singh Yadav’s predicament resonates among the BSP’s voters in the Dalit village of Satgur Kheda in the same district, for instance, and in Chamarpurva farther away in Mohanlalganj. There is irregular electricity in Chamarpurva and darkness blankets Satgur Kheda after sunset; there is no road in either village. But in both places, as they profess support for Mayawati, the dominant sense is one of resignation, not aspiration. “Who else will we vote for, if not the BSP? At least, Behenji is one of us.”

Across central UP that casts its vote in the third phase today, the real battle is set up between voters who are resigned to the claustrophobic and congealed ways in which the contest has been framed for them by political parties, and voters who are chafing against its limits. As this reporter travelled through constituencies in this region, the several signs of voter restlessness — evident, for instance, in the louder talk about candidates and the relative reticence on parties — seemed most acute among UP’s Muslims.

... contd.