| It used to be said that the road to Raisina Hill, the site of the Prime Minister’s Office, travels via Lucknow. Eight of India’s 14 prime ministers came from Uttar Pradesh; it still sends more MPs to the Lok Sabha than any other state, and it still is spoken of in extremes: India’s most populous state, one of its most backward and most badly governed. No other state in India could possibly boast of a chief minister whose tenure lasted one day. Over 80 per cent of the state’s current MLAs have criminal cases against them. Some of them even stand for election from jail and win. Yet, politically, Uttar Pradesh remains one of India’s most important states. The results of the forthcoming assembly elections could provide a shot in the arm for India’s two major national parties as well as a pointer to the future for the state’s two major regional parties. Mulayam Singh Yadav is struggling for survival, unable to widen his vote base, appealing to his voters to choose between keeping him in power or sending him to jail. His chief adversary, Mayawati, today is not just a Dalit politician but a tactician to be reckoned with. She has outsourced the job of winning votes to a rainbow coalition of allies, distributing over 300 election tickets to upper castes, Muslims and OBCs. The BJP has returned to its formula of seeking votes through hardline Hindutva and the Congress, looking to win Uttar Pradesh after 18 long years, has offered Rahul Gandhi as the face and voice of its campaign. Rahul sought to capitalise on the mystique of the Nehru-Gandhi family and other than making national headlines, the move has backfired. India has the world’s youngest voting population and Bangladesh means little to them. Politics has changed and the state which used to vote in one block is now driven by caste equations. A rout in Uttar Pradesh will mean that the Congress has no footholds in north India barring Haryana and Jammu & Kashmir. The fallout of a poor result for the Congress will have a ripple effect on the upa government. Coalition politics is not about bonds of loyalty but merely the politics of convenience. The strongmen of the states will see little benefit in being associated with a force diminished at the national level. Our cover story this week features a comprehensive analysis of Uttar Pradesh’s place in India’s polity and its current political climate. It was put together by our political bureau, including Deputy Editor Farzand Ahmed and Special Correspondent Subhash Mishra in Lucknow. From Delhi, Assistant Editor Priya Sahgal travelled to a dozen stops on Rahul Gandhi’s campaign. The people of the state constitute 1/7th of India’s population and if we want to be realistic about India’s economic growth we have to first check how states like Uttar Pradesh (and neighbouring Bihar) are doing. Uttar Pradesh matters because if it fails, then the Indian dream will fail. Index
| 
