Campaign Diary

In March 2009 Manvendra Singh, the BJP's candidate for the Barmer Lok Sabha constituency, launched his election campaign to retain the seat that he had won with a record margin in 2004 and lovingly nurtured as a member of Parliament for five years. Over two months, he criss-crossed his sprawling constituency straddling Rajasthan's Thar desert, covering 34,000 kilometres in temperatures often nearing 50°C, to meet his constituents. They included herders and headmen; communities of traditional balladeers and craftsmen; youth groups and hoary old political fixers; Muslim pirs, Jain munis and Hindu priests. Campaign Diary, a daily record of those gruelling weeks of canvassing voters, is a compelling portrait of democracy in action in one corner of India, and shows the impact of local, national and international issues and policies at the grass-roots level. Vividly bringing to life the heat and dust, the intrigues and infighting, the moving personal encounters and comic episodes...