LUCKNOW, India — With more than 200 million people, including some of the poorest on the planet, Uttar Pradesh is so big that it could be the fifth-largest country in the world. It is India’s biggest state, its biggest political prize and, with elections this month, its biggest political unknown.

“This election has an absolutely different quality,” said Anil Verma, a political scientist at Christ Church College in Kanpur, and a leading analyst on Uttar Pradesh politics. “In 2007, we had a definite sense of how things were going to be. Things are very, very strange, to my mind.”

Indian politics often seem like a never-ending chess game played on multiple boards by multiple players in elections that deliver multiple messages. In Uttar Pradesh, all those movable parts come into play in a single state. If Uttar Pradesh lacks an overriding issue this time, analysts regard the race as a barometer of many key issues shaping Indian politics: the changing roles of caste and religion, the impact of public disgust over corruption and the rising public desire to share the fruits of economic growth.

It is tempting to frame the election as a showdown between two of India’s most powerful political figures: Rahul Gandhi of the Indian National Congress party, which leads the national coalition government, and Mayawati, the state’s incumbent chief minister and India’s most powerful low-caste political leader.