UPping the stakes

Exit poll prognostications have had the markets heading south and political parties heading north — to that great swathe of territory known as Uttar Pradesh. The last two phases of this election process will decide who gets to mop up the remaining 48 seats in this gargantuan state that are now up for grabs.

Winning them is easier said than done, given the riddles that UP is rife with. And each riddle comes with a cluster of smaller riddles. How, for instance, will UP’s Muslims vote this time? It’s an important question to raise, given that the community accounts for 19 per cent of the state’s population and is expected to influence decisively the verdict in at least 36 constituencies. But the moment it is raised, it would also have to be decided whether, in fact, Muslims continue to constitute a composite bloc in the state. After all, both the SP and BSP have assiduously wooed the community with some success, not to speak of a Congress that is now hoping to revive its fortunes with some help from the minorities and the BJP making some very ardent, if rather hopeless, overtures in the background. Of course, the utter cynicism of this exercise is patent to any disinterested observer, given the fact that Muslims continue to remain one of the most neglected communities in the state, but that of course is another story. The other big riddle is the extent of the Congress’s supposed revival in UP. Which immediately raises the question whether this development is linked solely to the unleashing of the Gandhi progeny on the state, and whether that would really make a difference to the party’s fortunes in constituencies other than Amethi and Rae Bareli. For the BJP, it appears a struggle to even hang on to the 29 seats it got last time. The Ayodhya temple issue briefly figured during L.K. Advani’s Bharat Uday yatra, but the excitement over it is a pale, pale shadow of that of 14 years ago. So is it enough for the party to hang on to Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s kurta and ridicule the Opposition for its clumsy attempts to come to power?

The answers to all these riddles are locked up, as always, in UP. No wonder is it said that an election in this state is like a general election within a general election.