India, May 5 -- The Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), the third and fourth largest parties in the Lok Sabha (by representation) among the Opposition, and the fourth and fifth largest overall, were voted out of power in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, respectively, in the latest round of assembly elections declared Monday. The results should worry the INDIA grouping of Opposition parties because they suggest a further shrinking in electoral mindspace occupied by parties other than the national political hegemon, the Bharatiya Janata Party. Sure, Vijay's Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), which emerged the largest party in Tamil Nadu, isn't allied with the BJP, but it isn't aligned with the Opposition either. Its politics aren't clear, but one of its biggest talking points during the campaign was that it was neither the BJP nor the DMK, indicating an anti-status-quo and anti-establishment rhetoric reminiscent of the Aam Aadmi Party. How does one read the election results for four states and one Union Territory? The BJP retained Assam; the NDA, Puducherry; and the Congress-led United Democratic Front swept Kerala, but all three results were expected. Everyone expected West Bengal to be close, though the vote shares and seat shares show that it was anything but (the BJP won 45.84% of the votes for wins in 127 seats and leads in 80, compared to the TMC's 40.77% for wins in 48 and leads in 32 as of 9 pm). The real surprise was Tamil Nadu, where an upstart start-up engineered an upset, winning 34.92% of the vote for wins in 73 seats and leads in 33, in a result that, on the face of it, reiterates the real-life influence of reel-life protagonists south of the Vindhyas, although a deeper reading points to a more fundamental shift that should worry all established political parties. Are there any commonalities in the results? Can political parties learn something from them? And what do the results mean for national politics? The last question is the easiest to answer, for the BJP is a big gainer, perhaps the biggest one, from this round of assembly elections. It has retained Assam and Puducherry, and won West Bengal for the first time in history (and soon after Bihar got its first BJP chief minister). Its alliance in Tamil Nadu has not done badly at all, and it will see the entry of a third force, the TVK, in a contest that has remained bipolar for 60 years as evidence that there is still space available in the state's politics. The party has also managed a respectable vote share in Kerala and won three seats. Better still from its perspective, two large federal parties, the TMC and the DMK, have suffered losses. There is little the Opposition can take heart from; indeed, there is nothing that could have made the outcome worse for it, and losses to the TMC and the DMK are likely to deepen existing fissures within the INDIA grouping that wins might have papered over. The BJP will also see Monday's results as final proof that its performance in the 2024 national election was an aberration, and a sign that it will come back to power in 2029, although three years is a long time in politics. And it will reap the benefits of its performance in the Rajya Sabha, where its numbers will increase. At a larger level, the results also prove that welfare politics can only go so far - especially in a competitive scenario where every party promises to keep the tap flowing. In Tamil Nadu, the vote suggests a demographic revolution orchestrated by the young (numbers proving this are not readily available). Across West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and, to some extent, even Kerala, the vote was against dynastic politics: Abhishek Banerjee in the first, Udayanidhi Stalin in the second, and PA Mohamed Riyas in the third were all polarising figures - and played their part in Monday's outcome. Finally, were the TMC in West Bengal (as a Hindustan Times columnist wrote Monday) and the DMK in Tamil Nadu over-reliant on political consultancies, rather than politics, expecting them to handle electoral outreach in addition to their traditional back-room number-crunching role?...