In Maharashtra, a traditional Congress stronghold where the BJP was historically junior partner of the Shiv Sena, the BJP won eight of ten municipal corporations. In Gujarat, the BJP won 107 of 123 municipalities and Panchayats. In Chandigrah local elections, the party won 21 out 26 seats. In Faridabad, Haryana, it got 30 of 40 seats. In Odisha, it made enormous strides challenge to four-time Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.

If the wind is blowing from Maharashtra and Gujarat through Punjab and Haryana into Odisha, can Uttar Pradesh be immune? No politics in UP today is local. There is little support for any local BJP leader. The chant you hear everywhere is “Modi, Modi, Modi”.

For many liberals, Modi is the mass killer of 2002, beyond the moral pale. These liberals today struggle to cope up with reality that Modi has captured the high moral ground and can sneer at liberal critics while the crowd roar in approval. In one speech, Modi boasted that after denunciations intellectuals from Harvard (read Amritiya Sen), the GDP data showed no negative impact of DeMo. The crowd guffawed when he said hard work mattered more than Harvard.

Earlier, economists had written that DeMo would barely touch the stock of old black money, would not stop fresh black money generation without major additional reforms, and has caused much short-term pain to small enterprises and casual labourers. Economists expect when revised GDP data come next year, covering small enterprises excluded in the last week’s estimate, economic growth will show a significant fall.

But such economic analysis fails totally to capture the moral dimension of DeMo. It is first and foremost a political move to capture the political high ground by taking on dishonest rich in a blunt way that no professed socialists and communists have done. It has strengthened Modi’s charisma that intangible characteristic that defies easy definition but is enormously powerful like that of a rock star.

Most rural voters say DeMo did not hit them, only the wealthy Urban retailers say business was hit for two months but has revived. All say Modi is only politician serious about catching the dishonest and transforming the status quo. They don’t know many ways in which DeMo was bungled. But after seeing a cavalcade of politicians who swear by the poor and enrich themselves, they see in Modi a politician from a poor family who has remained personally poor, has no greedy relatives exploiting his position and serious about economic development.

It is often said that all politics is local. Voters in eastern UP may not vote like those in other parts of this giant state. Yet a trip through eastern UP suggests such strong support for the BJP that it has recorded big win.

At the grassroots, local issues usually dominate. But once in a while a national wind blows everything else away. That the wind today is Narendra Modi. His national sweep in 2014 was followed by national disasters in the state elections in Delhi and Bihar in 2015. The Modi wind seemed to be dying. But it has revived with vengeance. (IPA Service)