Modi's Path Is Cleared, But Unclear

When voters in the northern province of Uttar Pradesh delivered Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party a landslide victory in elections to the state assembly, he cemented his place as India’s most powerful leader in two generations. With every major competitor confused, defeated or in decline, there’s simply no national alternative in sight to Modi or his Bharatiya Janata Party. Oddly, however, this also means we are less certain than ever about what sort of leader he will be, and where he will steer India’s economy.

Uttar Pradesh -- almost always called “UP” -- dominated Indian politics for decades, sending successive prime ministers to New Delhi and serving as a bulwark of support for the Indian National Congress in the years when India was effectively a single-party democracy. It’s huge, almost unmanageably so: Over 200 million people live in UP, many of them among the poorest in the world.