The way is UP

The Uttar Pradesh assembly election is due next year,and much of the current political crackle and activity are in anticipation of this one event. It has long been the site that prefigures larger shifts in the national narrative — and this time too,it is expected that the UP result is going to offer a significant reading of what is to come,and bear on the 2014 situation. Now,the Congress and Ajit Singh’s Rashtriya Lok Dal are at the last stages of negotiating their alliance — it’s one of the first pieces of UP’s electoral jigsaw being put in place.

As the Congress cobbles together its formal pacts and informal understandings,it hopes that its dramatic boost in the 2009 Lok Sabha election will translate into a bigger role in the assembly election too,making it a real contender in the ruling formation. The RLD has long been a small but important actor,and has allied with every side in UP’s contest — Ajit Singh has been an important minister in many national and state governments,despite his party’s relatively narrow constituency of Jat farmers in western UP. Its power derives from the flux and uncertainty of the state’s politics. Unlike most other states,which have by now settled into a comfortable swing between two parties,and are then aligned to the two big national coalitions,UP is still an open field of possibilities. After a period of intense fragmentation and identity politics,the impulse has been to aggregate,stitch together alliances of interests. In the last decade,it has evolved further — while voters are highly conscious of caste,community and religion,there is also an overriding concern about development,about tangible questions of welfare and progress.

UP has tried every possible permutation,between the BSP,SP,Congress and BJP — and now,there are signs of an exhaustion with politics that addresses itself solely to identity issues. The charged questions of land acquisition and law and order are certain to play a decisive role in the upcoming election. What surprise will UP spring this time?