Anxieties touched off by the NEET cancellation-retest among students, their families and a penumbra of empathetic others, have joined with long-playing insecurities due to the recurring irregularity-leak-cancellation-delay syndrome in state-held exams in UP.

Spiralling prices exacerbated by a distant war are pressing down more heavily upon household budgets, forcing large numbers at lower ends of the caste and class echelons to make sapping either-or choices. Many speak of shrinking opportunities, defined in an economy beset with uncertainties as jobs that are secure and “sarkari”.

They speak, also, of a “bhrashtachar (corruption)” on the watch of a government in which the bureaucracy is seen to be given a free hand while an all-powerful CMO ensures that MLAs-ministers’ wings are clipped.

For the ruling BJP, which has just conquered West Bengal and before that Bihar, and which is aggressively cobbling up, through the serial breaking of regional parties, the parliamentary majority it could not win electorally, the good news is this: These discontents and anxieties are not unmixed.

Many The Indian Express spoke to made a distinction between the “System”/“Vyavastha” and “Sarkar”/Government — laying blame on the former to absolve the latter.

Most pointed to a perceived lack of political alternative — the SP is still widely seen as trapped in its past image of a Muslim-Yadav party that presided over lawlessness. Especially in Varanasi and Gorakhpur, many point to ongoing welfare schemes and unfolding infrastructure projects to underline the inevitability of Modi-Yogi. Most of all, across the five cities, the Yogi government’s “tight prashasan”, its apparently strong grip on law and order, continues to draw admiration and support.

And yet, in this journey through UP’s cities, rising over and above the new clamour held down by an older blunting, another set of voices make themselves heard, sporadically but insistently.

They identify themselves as BJP faithfuls, “hum kattar bhajpai hain”, some say. “Par…”. But…

Listen to them and you get the sense that, among its supporters, a BJP story that packaged aspiration and hope with majoritarian assertion and “zero tolerance” policies wielded not just against crime but also civil society dissenters and political opponents, may be fraying.

It is buffeted by the harshness of ground realities, the excesses and complacencies that unbridled success brings — and also by hesitant stirrings of empathy for the “Other” in UP.

In Sharmaji’s tea shop, an old Lucknow landmark, walking distance from Vidhan Sabha, where early morning regulars stand around tables, sipping kulhad chai, and sit on benches in an adjoining park under the shade of trees, Neeraj — second names have been withheld to protect identities — who has a property business, and who says he has been voting for the BJP, shares his concern: “Desh, desh ka yuva, aage nahin badh raha hai (the nation and its young are not moving forward)”.

Deep, who works in a bank, says: “Badlav karte rahna chahiye, (you need to keep changing governments). Kendra mein bhi, rajya mein bhi (in the state and at the Centre)”. Big industry heads to the country’s south and west, he says, no one wants to come to UP.

“Law and order is not alright in UP”, says Neeraj. “Kuch zyaada hi punishment… pair mein goli maar kar half encounter… ghar gira dena (police shoot criminals in the leg, homes of alleged criminals are bulldozed). Ghar badi mushkil se banta hai (a home is not easily built)”, he says.

The main problem, says Neeraj, is “dar ka mahaul (climate of fear) — Hindus are fearful of Muslims, Muslims of Hindus”.

“Ek community ko zyaada daba rahe hain (one community is being targeted excessively) but if you question the BJP you are labelled desh drohi (anti-national)”, says Deep. He couldn’t go to the protests against paper leaks at Lucknow’s Eco Garden on June 12, but he wanted to express solidarity with students — because he was a student and a job aspirant once, because “where will they go, those who are graduating?”.

In Kanpur’s Kakadeo locality, Devyanshu, in the construction business, says: “Under the SP, there was rampant badmashi (lawlessness). This government gives suraksha (security). But is that enough? Corruption has increased exponentially, so has the commission we need to pay”.

It is out of “majboori (helplessness)”, he says, that he will turn again to the BJP: “The party has managed to convince us, almost against our will, that if the BJP government goes, we will be unsafe. We have been brainwashed…”

“Modi ji is also not moving with the speed he once showed”, says Sanjog, a bank employee. “If only Akhilesh were to stand up today and say that he will henceforth be evenhanded, that everyone is equal for him, irrespective of caste or community”.

In Z Square Mall in the city centre, you hear disillusion in a group of businessmen, who describe themselves as “bhajpai” or BJP supporters. “There was progress in the BJP’s two terms at the Centre, but here in Kanpur, nothing has moved. The city lacks even a kilometre of continuously smooth road, officials have become autocratic. If we point to the bad condition of the road, we are told to turn our gaze to the highway”, says Vineet.

The SP is not an option for this group — “their lower rung leaders are already making threatening noises, and wasn’t it Mulayam who said boys will be boys?”, says Asit. Earlier when they voted for the BJP, they say, there was an expectation from the government. Now, says Vineet, fear of the SP has been replaced by fear of the BJP losing power.

“Will those who have been rendered voiceless by this government rise in anger? For us, now, development takes second place to this anxiety … Majboori mein ‘Jai Shri Ram’ kehna pad raha hai (it is our compulsion to say ‘Jai Shri Ram’)”.

In Varanasi, in an early-morning all-women yoga class in Company Bagh in the heart of the city, Shalini echoes her companions’ enthusiastic support for Modi and Yogi — more for Yogi.

The UP chief minister is applauded for his take-no-prisoners style, especially when it comes to minorities. They mention, in particular, the Yogi government’s clearing of the historic, Muslim-dominated Daal Mandi area near the Kashi Vishwanath Temple, for road widening— Ghalib is known to have written his “Chirag-e-Dair” here, Agha Hashr Kashmiri, celebrated Urdu poet-playwright and pioneer of Parsi theatre, had his home here. But Shalini attaches a caveat: “Dar hai, sarkar ka dar (there is fear of government)… be it Opposition or media, if they speak up, they are slapped with cases. Their houses are raided and stashes of liquor or currency notes are miraculously seized”.

And in the famed Pappu ki dukan near Assi Ghat, a modest and unembellished nook of daily debate over tea, Dhruv, self-professed Modi supporter, says, “Yogi never talks of education or jobs or price rise. The government disallows namaz on the street, even on Bakrid. What if the next government says no kaanwads during saawan? Or no crowds in public places during Navratri?”

In Gorakhpur, Vinay, who teaches in a coaching institute, says “My daughter will give NEET next year, I am already worried… The success of Rahul Gandhi’s Kota rally was due to the failure of the Modi government. BJP has lost every opportunity to improve the system.” He is alienated, he says, by the SP’s favouring of a specific caste and community “har level pe”, at every level. Akhilesh Yadav’s promises to pitch its tent wider do not reassure him. But he is bothered by the BJP’s “tod phod” or destruction of regional parties: “What else is it, if not a bid to keep power with one party permanently?”

The restiveness in BJP voters is more articulate in the upper castes, and within them, among Brahmins, who also have caste-centric grievances — a sense of being upstaged by Thakurs on one end, to resentments over backward caste reservation on the other, and the police encounter of Brahmin don Vikas Dubey.

But contrarian voices can be heard, too, among BJP supporters in SCs and non-Yadav OBCs.

In a Scheduled Caste Malin basti in Varanasi, Dinesh, who works in the Nagar Nigam, says: “For us, there is only price rise, no sunvai (hearing) and no vacancy. Free rations of wheat and rice are not enough….”. His wife says: “The government doesn’t pay attention to the poor. And I don’t like the destruction in Daal Mandi — sabka pet hai, sabke baal bachche hain…We can’t think only of ourselves”.

In the SC/OBC dominated neighbourhood in Bichhiya, Gorakhpur, Govind says: “It is becoming expensive to do both — feed and educate our children… Babaji (Yogi) says prashasan tight hai, then how come there are paper leaks in UP?… Ek Nauka Vihar se vikas nahin ho jaayega”. He is referring to Yogi’s lake-front beautification project in Gorakhpur.

The discontent among BJP supporters is still low key. With months to go for the election, it may settle down, or it may not. It is also flailing for an alternative.

For now, in a state that has seen the steady extinguishing of public spaces of debate, one by one, it has no place to go — quite literally.

In Prayagraj, a political and intellectual centre, a nursery of student and establishment and resistance politics, you can count the spaces that used to be, and are no more, their demise quickened and sealed by the government of Yogi.

In front of Prayag station, tea shops hosted fiery discussions, and student leaders honed their arguments. The shops are there, but the vibrant night life is long gone, student union elections don’t take place anymore since 2019.

Outside the Accountant General office, a mock assembly, the “Pulia Parliament”, would play out daily. “Today, if it were there, it would discuss the Iran war or the NEET leak”, says Anshu Malviya, poet and activist.

PD Tandon Park hosted political rallies, the first major anti-Mandal Commission rally was held here in September 1990; protesters would also gather in the district court complex under the old banyan tree. The park is beautified and protests have been banished to the All Saints Cathedral in the corner of Civil Lines.

Now, spaces for protest have been designated. Dissent or discontent, even under the BJP umbrella, dare not give itself a name or call attention to its place in UP.