India, Sept. 19 -- If the Lok Sabha verdict is considered a benchmark in resetting the grammar of politics as swatting the Opposition, then its impact on regional politics has been such as to eliminate the relevance of federal parties. Once the backbone of powerful coalition governments at the Centre, State parties are now much like tribal chieftains, good enough for lording over their flocks but too tiny to stall the juggernaut of national parties gobbling them up. In such a scenario, they have just two options, either withdraw to their pocketboroughs or sign up with the big players if they want to stay in the game. So it is that in Maharashtra, there has been a mass migration from the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) to...