Just as the liberal-progressive world was trying to come to terms with a Donald Trump presidency last year and the American mainstream media was engaged in wrenching soul-searching about its role in coverage, a top journalist from one of the mainstream networks made a startling statement. What he said revealed how the media was partisan in its coverage of the 2016 elections.Chuck Todd of NBC confessed that the media knew Hillary Clinton was hated in the heartland and “failed to tell the story of all Americans”. “Where I think political correctness got in the way of what we all knew as reporters and didn't fully deliver was how hated the Clintons were in the heartland,” he said in an interview on Jan 27. This is one of America’s premier journalists admitting clearly to to bias at work in leading US newsrooms. As everybody knows, US media played up Clinton’s chances in the November 8 polls and ignored Trump’s popularity with much of the electorate.Hours after the Narendra Modi tsunami hit Uttar Pradesh washing away the electoral chances and possibly careers of many Congress, SP and BSP politicians, a similar question is likely to haunt Indian news media and the pollster community. Only two pollsters, out of probably a dozen, were accurate in predicting the extent of the BJP sweep. No journalist, and this includes many who travelled extensively in the heartland, came close to predicting such a sweep. All that they could say was that BJP is in pole position or that it is going to be a tough fight with SP and BSP cranking up support among their caste voters.Will the Indian media and pollsters engage in similar soul searching like the American media did? Will they admit to mistakes or even bias in not picking up evidence of one of the biggest sweeps in Indian electoral history in the past four decades? I wish it happens, but I am not waiting with bated breath.However important this may be, one should not get distracted by the real message of the UP elections. And this message is just about prime minister Narendra Modi and his popularity. Or the possibility of BJP winning in 2019 general elections with Modi as the prime minister again.UP voters have delivered a big message not just to BJP and the PM but also to opposition parties, Hidden among the votes that were counted across India’s most populous state is a warning about a new kind of politics that is likely to dominate the country. A politics that will pit Hindu consolidation and desire to be united against minority consolidation, a politics that will become increasingly development-oriented as other parties seek to counter the BJP’s energetic advance. The UP verdict It is also a warning to other non-UP, regional parties and Modi rivals and PM aspirants such as West Bengal’s stormy petrel, Mamta Bannerjee. It is a warning that what can happen in UP can happen in West Bengal also given the communists parties’ comatose state. There is a message in the verdict for journalists and media, but we will come to that later.Let us now take a look at some of these in detail:Former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani used to speak about BJP’s 'splendid isolation’ in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. They were referring to the fact that the other parties were so desperate to keep the BJP out of power that they were willing to enter into unholy alliances and that this benefitted the party as it showed voters that BJP was the party to beat. Little could Messrs Vajpayee and Advani have realised how this would play out in 2017, long after they had lost their premier role in the party. The SP-Cong alliance in January 2017 may not have been unholy but it was a last minute, desperate attempt to come together to keep their respective flock together and stop the BJP. It didn't work but what worked for the BJP was not just anti-incumbency or the ability of voters to see through the sordid opportunism behind such a rickety arrangement. It was also the BJP and its president Amit Shah’s carefully crafted strategy of stitching together an alliance of non-Yadav OBCs, upper castes and non-Jatav Dalits.The media hype about the anger of upper castes and the trader community against demonetisation proved to be just that. Hype. The Mumbai civic elections, when the Gujarati and trader dominated areas voted heavily for the BJP and the UP verdict shows that upper castes have solidly stood behind the party despite anger against demonetisation and the BJP’s aggressive wooing of OBCs and Dalits. Reports emerged during the seven phases of polling that Brahmins in some seats were not voting for the party due to presence of OBC candidates. The overall result shows little evidence of such a trend though we will have to wait for more data to see whether that is true.The BJP’s emergence as a party dominated by OBCs and possibly some Dalits with the support of majority of upper castes is bound to give sleepless nights to opposition. The BJP won the 2014 elections by engineering such a coalition and UP 2017 shows that support has not diminished in any way. In Maharashtra civic and zilla parishad elections, the BJP once again secured support of OBCs, upper castes and Dalits to leave others in the lurch. In some areas of Mumbai, even Marathi youth with no memory of the Samyukta Maharashtra agitation or of Bal Thackeray even voted for the BJP. Can other parties match this armada of support in 2019 or in other state elections? The nightmare for the opposition parties has just begun. The BJP has now not just become a national party but also one which can draw support of all kinds of groups and castes.Time was when the Congress and other secular/socialist parties would play on the fears of minorities about BJP and its allegedly aggressive Hindutva agenda to win elections. This happened in 2004 after the Gujarat riots and was repeated in several state elections. Many pundits and analysts, including BJP leaders and strategists, thought the best way to counter it was to lie low, drop controversial points from its manifesto and try to play the role of a centrist party. This failed spectacularly but supporters of this tactic are still present within the BJP and RSS eco-system. For the first time in 2014, Modi showed what was possible by mounting a spectacular consolidation of Hindu voters across UP. BJP candidates won in many seats where Muslims were either in majority or near majority and this process was repeated in 2017. Senior India Today journalist Rahul Kanwal tweeted in February after the second phase that the grand alliance had sent out an SOS to minority groups and supporters across the Yadav heartland to lie low and not adopt any aggressive posture till the end of polls. Bijnor, Deoband and Farrukhabad are some of the Muslim-dominated areas where the BJP is either leading or has won. The message therefore is very clear. The Hindus too can consolidate and the aggressive caste-based social engineering combined with Hindutva can be ruthlessly effective. In future elections, opposition parties would be careful about playing the minority card and the BJP would be aggressively looking to consolidate Hindu votes. Watch out for Karnataka in 2018. This scenario has a chance of playing itself out especially in the state’s coastal parts.West Bengal is far away from UP and conventional wisdom is that the elections will have no impact on Bengal politics. That’s mostly true but it does not account for one factor, Mamta’s aggressive minority politics. She is alienating the Hindus of the state and giving space to the RSS/BJP to consolidate voters by playing on their fears of minority aggression and dominance. It was reported recently that the RSS is planning to focus heavily in the state and other Hindu groups are also investing heavily in the state. According to The Hindu, schools affiliated to RSS organisations are growing rapidly in the state. The Hindu Samhati, which has been agitating against Mamta Banerjee’s Muslim appeasement, held a massive rally in Kolkata on February 14. Mamta cannot afford to ignore the growth of RSS or the BJP in the state. What happened in minority dominated or mixed-community areas of UP can also happen in West Bengal. Her bland statement today on the results and its weak tone possibly reflects her worry about what the BJP will do in Bengal.It is clear from this verdict that regional parties are in trouble. The SP and BSP have been routed, the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra is on the backfoot, the JD (U) in Karnataka has collapsed and the AIADMK and DMK in Tamil Nadu are in serious trouble. With the BJP making major inroads into many big states, the once-dominant regional parties are in various stages of decline. We may be seeing the beginning of the end of the strong regional parties who emerged in the mid-1990s and dominated politics for nearly two decades. If the BJP makes more aggressive moves towards co-opting Jatav dalits and Yadavs, the two UP-based parties would be in trouble. Chandrababu Naidu in AP, Naveen Patnaik are relatively better placed and we may see the suave Patnaik moving closer to the BJP than in the past. India may be heading towards a unique situation with one dominant national party, the BJP is surrounded by a host of other regional parties (including the Congress) in various stages of decline. It is not a healthy situation for any democracy but the blame for this should be squarely on India’s opposition. They have failed to read the writing on the wall.It is not necessary for the public to believe demonetisation is a failure just because you and other like-minded friends stood for hours in a frustratingly long-queue to withdraw or deposit money. Not necessary for the public to believe that prime minister Narendra Modi is doing a bad job just because you don't like the practice of giving free LPG cylinders or the slow pace of disinvestment. The public often has a different view on a particular leader that is different from that of intellectuals and journalists and we have seen enough evidence of that in various states over the decades. Next time, listen to what people say. It will help maintain credibility of the profession.