It is difficult to predict what exactly the political consequences of trifurcating UP would be. But there is good reason to believe that post-reorganisation patterns will not simply reproduce current political alignments. That is one reason that the national parties ought to be promoting the break-up of UP.

Politics in UP is unwieldy enough. But the sheer size of the state makes everything that happens there a high-stakes game. If nothing else, breaking up UP will ensure that it does not cast such a long shadow on national politics. But, more importantly, it will ensure that competition for ruling the state does not become a winner-takes-all affair. With three instead of one prize to compete over, political parties will begin to re-think their positions and the constituencies they should cultivate. There is good reason to think that the resulting politics will be less frenzied, more representative, more diverse, possibly more accommodative and more manageable than the current configuration. One might argue that Jharkhand does not give much cause for optimism on this score. But at the very least, the break-up will ensure that the entire region is not held back because of one state government. Although we need more research into how reorganisation of states transforms voter preferences, there is good reason to think that such a move will transform voter preferences.

The political puzzle is this. A party like the Congress has nothing to lose in the state. Why cannot it think out of the box and at least put this issue on the agenda? To use a paradoxical formulation: the emancipation of the citizens of UP depends upon the political abolition of the state of UP. And in campaigning for such a break-up the national parties might not only transform politics in UP, they might also overcome their own political ossification. And it would be wonderful if the Congress and the BJP came together on a platform for the structural transformation of the state, rather than the misguided use of Article 356.

... contd.