Uttar Pradesh could act as a role model for a fiscal approach that eschews risk-raising populist budgets

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The Ganga mostly flows east-southeast across the Indo-Gangetic alluvial plains towards its mouth in Kolkata. As it approaches Varanasi in eastern Uttar Pradesh (UP), it encounters something unusual: an outlier of ancient Vindhyan sandstone that juts northward into the otherwise soft alluvial plain. The river cannot cut through this resistant rock as easily as through alluvium, so instead of continuing straight eastward, it deflects northward, running along the western flank of this Vindhyan rock ridge.

It flows north for a short distance past the iconic ghats before eventually bending eastward again. This is what geomorphologists technically call lithological control over a river platform.The northward flow is central to the city’s religious significance. A river flowing north towards the Himalayas has been interpreted as an ascent towards the divine.

The ghats are built along the crescent-shaped concave western bank that the northward-flowing river naturally created, giving them their dramatic amphitheatre-like form. This ancient city framed between the Varuna River to its north and Assi River to its south (hence Varanasi) is one of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited cities, with a history spanning some 5,000 years. Varanasi, and its re-emergence in the last dozen or so years, is central to the direction of India’s modern politics.

While much is still left to be done, it has been dramatically cleaned up. It is the Prime Minister’s constituency in the country’s largest state, led by a future contender for high office at the national level. If Ayodhya is the emotional epicentre of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) political projection, then Varanasi can lay claim to