Indeed, one could argue that in the case of a mega state like UP, part of the difficulty is that this vast area has not had the benefit of competition among administrative jurisdictions. India has actually done reasonably well after most waves of state reorganisation. Smaller states like Himachal, Haryana and Uttaranchal have done reasonably well. The exception to this is the Northeast, but that is largely a consequence of aligning ethnicity with territoriality rather than the fact that they are small states. There may be no knock-down argument that can prove that small states within a federal polity will always be better, but on balance smaller states are more desirable than bigger ones.

In the case of UP, these arguments become even more compelling. India’s future requires that the current equilibrium of UP politics be drastically shaken up. The current equilibrium is a trap in two ways. The first is ideological. There is arguably no other state whose politics is in such a time warp: the issues of politics and the modalities of mobilising voters have remained the same for close to two decades. Even in benighted Bihar, there is at least something of aspirational change. But even if there is a change in government in UP, it is difficult to imagine such a parallel shift taking place. The second trap is structural. All parties are more or less stuck in their core social base, and are competing for that marginal crossover vote that can catapult them into power. But in a large state, heterogeneous preferences and their prospects of success depend less on taking voter preference seriously than on complicated alliance arithmetic. Citizens are disempowered because in a larger state they are also less likely to vote their true preferences; they have to trade off the costs of doing that versus electing representatives who are good at these cross-state bargains. The premium is not on which candidate you would like; it is on which candidate is more likely to succeed in the tough politics of negotiation over power.

... contd.