Although there is no shortage of analyses by learned media pundits of lessons to be drawn from the outcome of legislative assembly elections held almost simultaneously in the states of Assam, West Bengal, Keralam and Tamil Nadu, most of them have missed their big message because of insufficient appreciation of context and backdrop.

These assembly elections were held at a time of widespread awareness that 40 percent of graduates of India’s higher education institutions including 53,000 undergrad colleges and 1,338 universities are unemployed. Moreover, 65 percent of India’s population — and presumably the electorates of these states — were born after the landmark economic reforms of 1991. This generation has never experienced the hardships of the pre-liberalisation era.

The big message is that the majority of electorates in better educated states of the south is sick and tired of the caste-driven politics of peninsular India where it’s clear that the fires of atavistic caste antagonisms are being kept alive by politicians who have transformed political parties into closely held family companies. Most young citizens have studied together in schools and colleges and have in many cases romanced and perhaps married across caste lines despite parental opposition, and the rhetoric of historic caste prejudices and injustices have lost their edge. They are more interested in their employment, career and upward mobility prospects. Hence the massive rejection of caste-driven Dravidian parties and emphatic acceptance of TVK, led by movie star C. Joseph Vijay, a political novice and Christian unidentified by caste.

Ditto in Keralam where the anti-private industry politics of the two-term CPM and its chief minister P. Vijayan had perpetuated the reputation of the state as a no-go zone for employment generating private capital, is the major factor behind its rout.  Perhaps this obsolete prejudice against private capital, when it’s common knowledge that public sector enterprises have been a massive failure, also explains the consistent electoral rejection of Rahul Gandhi, who is unable to shake off his socialist ideology and disdain for India’s most successful industry leaders.

Critics of this line of argument are likely to demand an explanation about the continuous success of the divide-and-rule BJP, which historically routed the three-term Trinamool Congress led by its charismatic Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal. Yet it’s important to bear in mind that TMC was handicapped by anti-incumbency, and BJP is widely regarded as a pro-business party which will be more successful in reviving Bengal’s comatose industry ruined by three decades of virulent trade unionism of the Communist-led Left Front. Yet it’s a matter of time before the BJP’s divide-and-rule majoritarianism disillusions the state’s liberal tradition. The clear message of the recently concluded assembly elections in four states is that young voters are impatient and need a new grammar of politics.