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Uttar Pradesh is in political turmoil. There is feverish speculation on the implications of the many defections and realignments that have taken place. Will it severely damage the BJPs electoral juggernaut in 2022? Will it rearrange social communities to the advantage of the Samajwadi Party (SP)? Will the Congresss strategy of reserving 40 per cent tickets for women have an impact on electoral outcomes? Will there be a consolidation of the Muslim vote, especially in eastern UP? Will the farmers movement in western UP revive the fortunes of the RLD? These are some of the important questions being asked about the impact of the churn on electoral outcomes. In this intense debate, one significant aspect of democratic politics seems to have gone largely unnoticed. The assembly election in UP, it appears, has irreversibly changed the party system in UP. It has become more democratic.

There are four aspects to this change. The first is the shift in the party system, which had emerged since 2017, from a one-dominant party system to an alternating two-plus party system. The tea leaves reveal that the BJPs stranglehold on the party system has considerably weakened, particularly with the growth and mobilising power of the challenging parties, especially the SP. An analysis of the party system shows that the BJP now has a credible competitor. The coalitions stitched together by the SP means that it is now able to compete, measure for measure, with the BJP. This can be seen in terms of any of the aspects of what parties do: Recruit leaders, mobilise social groups, transmit demands from below upwards to the party leadership and transmit policies downwards to its supporters, represent the interests of its constituents, organise mass meetings, raise resources, carry out an effective media campaign, and so on. The SP and its allies are successfully performing this role of a political party. By doing so, they have produced in 2022 a shift from a one-dominant party system to what the results will show, irrespective of who wins, an alternating two-plus party system. This change is a huge gain for democracy. Democratic competition will be both more intense, between the two coalitions, and more contained since the coalitions will now have to develop a politics of compromise if they are to retain their appeal to plural constituencies.

The second aspect of the changed party system is the rise of political leaders on whom the parties have become dependent. These are not party functionaries but important politicians within whom the interests of their communities are represented. That is how they are seen by their supporters. YouTube videos affirm this. These leaders should be seen through Edmund Burkes theory on representation, the trustee model, where the representative embodies the interests of their constituents; where he goes, they go. This is legitimate. The bigger parties must, therefore, be flexible enough to accommodate such leaders since they are both individuals and also the embodiments of their communities.

Leaders and parties such as Jayant Chaudharys Rashtriya Lok Dal, or Om Prakash Rajbhars Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party or Keshav Dev Mauryas Mahan Dal or Sanjay Chauhans Janwadi Party (Socialist) or Krishna Patels Apna Dal (Kamerawadi) are examples of this trusteeship model. The BJP too has accepted this new political reality, as can be seen in its alliances with individual-led parties such as the Shoshit Samaj Party, Bharatiya Manav Samaj Party, Musahar Andolan Manch, Manavhit Party, Prithvi Raj Janshakti Party and Bhartiya Samta Samaj Party. The party as an institution has, as a result, become less imposing and less authoritarian because of the many veto points that such leaders occupy. The BJP too is, therefore, compelled to move towards a model of accommodative politics as Vajpayees coalition government had to do. It may lead to the formulation of a Common Minimum Programme (CMP) that guides and binds government decisions. When this happens, the party system in UP will have moved from a politics of imposition, the will of one supremo, to a politics of deliberation, the will of many small supremos, from one Trump to many trumpeters.

The third aspect that follows from this weakening of the BJPs dominance is its inability to control the narrative. Since 2017, the BJP has been setting the terms of the political narrative as was seen in the riots in Muzzafarnagar or on love jihad or on the killing of cattle, etc. This has now changed with an equally robust counter-narrative. The response of Jayant Chaudhary to the BJP leadership in Delhi who sought an alliance with the RLD, asking them to first go to the homes of the 700 people who died in the farmers movement, or of Tikait closing some of his rallies with Har Har Mahadev and Allah hu Akbar, are examples of this counter-discourse. It has acquired traction not just in the physical world but also in the cyber world, countering the BJPs much-vaunted cyber warriors.

While the above three aspects are essentially specific to UP, the fourth has implications for national politics. For the first time in any election, in any significant state, important political leaders are leaving the BJP and joining the Opposition. The significance of this reverse traffic has been glaringly missed. If one had tracked earlier cases of party hopping since the 2014 general elections, one would have noticed that the trend was from other parties to the BJP and not the other way around. Once they joined the BJP, they stayed. This was for a variety of reasons, but mostly out of fear. So, while leaders still cross from other parties to the BJP, in 2022 there has been a significant stream of important leaders exiting the BJP. This is very telling. It indicates that the BJPs formula of holding leaders, through inducements and fear, has been considerably diminished.

Leaders are now not afraid of the BJPs reaction to them leaving. A O Hirschmans classic book Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, on business organisations, provides a good frame from which to view this new development. One had always wondered since 2014, that while exit (leaving the organisation), voice (protesting against the organisations policies) and loyalty (showing support for the organisation) had been features of all other political parties, in the case of the BJP, the feature most visible was loyalty. One saw this most clearly in the behaviour of MPs from UP. They remained silent during the year-long farmers agitation, during the atrocities against Dalits, etc. They showed no exit, no voice, but only loyalty. In the 2022 elections, this has changed. The BJP has to now contend with the new experience of exit and voice. As a result, it has become like any other party. The habit of exit, voice, and loyalty has now been normalised. Three cheers for Indian democracy.

This column first appeared in the print edition on. February 18, 2022 under the title The churn in UP. The writer is D D Kosambi Visiting Professor, Goa University. Views are personal

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The 2022 polls in UP show deepening of democracy - The Indian Express