Battle for the Hindi Heartland: Whose year will 2019 eventually be?

It is difficult to estimate the difference that Modi would make in a general election campaign

In December 11, the Congress evicted the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from office in three substantial Hindi-heartland states. It was a good day at the races. It was also a necessary outing. The minimum that the party needed to fend off political extinction was two out of three provinces in the cow-belt corridor. A sweep of all three was better than the bare minimum, but after its rout in Telangana, the landslide in Chhattisgarh felt like solvency, not riches.

At the beginning of 2018, the Congress ruled Mizoram, Puducherry, Punjab and Karnataka. With general elections less than a year-and-a-half away,