Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Oil majors have been reporting bumper profits again. Part of what's added to their balance

sheets is some sell-offs. They're responding to pressure to offload the dirtiest bits

of their operations. So who are the buyers? And our annual democracy index is out and

it's not encouraging reading. On the whole, global freedom is under even more pressure

than last year. But in the country rankings, there are some bright spots too.

First up, though. Today in Uttar Pradesh, India's biggest state, a complicated month-long

vote begins to elect its state legislature. Back in 2016, Donald Trump brought the musician

Kid Rock to his election rallies. The party of Narendra Modi, India's Prime Minister,

has invoked a higher power, Lord Ram, for Hindus, the embodiment of virtue.

The campaign has been intense with rallies and campaign songs on social media.

Mr. Modi's Bartiagintaparti, or BJP, has been campaigning much as the country has been

ruled for eight years on Hindutva, an aggressive form of Hindu nationalism. The rhetoric emphasizes

Hindu identity, but also in Uttar Pradesh, all that the party has delivered, infrastructure

spending, food handouts, and a crackdown on crime. For Mr. Modi to win another term in

2024, his party has to win big in this state election over the next month.

If Uttar Pradesh were a country, it would be the world's fifth biggest in population

at somewhere between Pakistan and Indonesia. It's got one in every six people in India.

Max Rodenbach is the economist South Asia bureau chief.

It's so big that voting has to be done in seven phases, in different geographic slices

of the state over a whole month. And what is it that makes this election so important?

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