SIMPLY PUT: Uttar Pradesh is bored of the opposition

Four out of five elections in the bag ⁠— the first incumbent party in Uttar Pradesh to win the state in 37 years ⁠— is enough for a delirious party (celebration). The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is not a new party, but it’s the only one that seems to have the strongest organisation among all political parties. But money and power may just be two of the ingredients that make it so effective.

The result of the latest election in Uttar Pradesh (UP) has reinforced one fact about the state’s changing politics: identity politics, as we’ve come to know it, is passe.

The wave of anti-establishment leaders, who emerged in North India in the 1980s, saw India as a mishmash of several identities, based on religion, caste, language and so on, saw an opportunity in becoming individual power centres by representing one or more of these factions promising them clout along with affirmative action.

Their fiefdoms seemed to have broken by the Narendra Modi wave in 2014 and haven't recovered since then. It’s not because those identities have suddenly dissolved into a larger national, or even a state level, group.

Both caste-based oppression and religious discrimination is alive and well. The Samajwadi Party gained a lot by tapping into the fear of persecution among Muslims this time and won the best ever-vote share in the party’s history.

However, on a larger scale, the issue hasn’t won them the election. It just seems like people don’t expect politicians to resolve these issues. After decades of broken promises, people don’t seem to be looking for anti-dynasty messiahs who, eventually, initiate their own dynasty.

People want to hear something new from the challengers. So, parties fell back on the tried and tested issues like unemployment and inflation. But that hasn’t worked in UP either.

It’s not like there were no chinks in the BJP armour. Even what the government could do on its own, it hasn’t. Over 10 million young people who applied for a Railways recruitment exam have not received the results in over 2 years. A teacher eligibility test to be held by the government became a controversy after it got cancelled just before the elections. But these things have happened in UP even when the BJP was not in power.

The fact is even in the Modi or Yogi Adityanath era, UP has seen massive job losses, partly due to the pandemic. But they were able to offer some tangible solutions too: additional work for the unskilled, under the rural employment guarantee scheme (as flawed as it may be), and free food for the poor.

The free ration, in the wake of the pandemic, provided by the government has been particularly popular in states like Uttar Pradesh that rank very poorly by level of poverty and contribute a large proportion of India’s migrant workers.



Issues like the arrest of journalists, killing of farmers in Lakhimpur, the rape in Hathras, have not enraged the collective conscience in a way that the opposition would have wanted.

Essentially, BJP leaders and supporters can say any abhorrent thing against religious minorities ⁠— Modi and other icons can continue to condone or ignore it ⁠— as long as the policies themselves aren’t discriminatory. Simply put, for example, as long as no one is denied free ration because of their religion or caste, the people are able to ignore the rhetoric.

Does that mean that the BJP will remain in power forever? No. But the alternative has to be a new face, a new outfit that captures the imagination of the Indian youth in a way that existing leaders don’t.

The Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) sweeping win in Punjab is proof of exactly that. AAP is a 7-year old political upstart that has become a credible political alternative in Delhi and Punjab, and broken ground in Goa. What works for it is Kejriwal’s crafty cocktail of welfare politics, anti-establishment posturing with a healthy dose of religious flattery.

In fact, it may even seem like what the voter wants isn’t exactly a new idea, but s/he surely doesn’t want to hear it from the same old flock of career/dynastic politicians.

Even now, BJP has serious challengers in many states but none of them have any traction beyond their home states. Mamata Banerjee’s attempt to seek votes for Akhilesh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh hasn’t yielded much. Even the idea of a coalition of regional parties ⁠— from Arvind Kejriwal to MK Stalin, from Mamata Banerjee to Pinarayi Vijayan, from Jagan Reddy to Ashok Gehlot ⁠— taking on Modi seems jaded, if not flimsy.

The way people vote for a state election is different from how they vote for the Parliament. This was the best chance for opposition to show some might and they’ve lost it. The opposition needs a new face to change the face of the government.