For whom Bellary tolls? A ding-dong battle rages at Jean Junction

“People here are swalpa (a little) fast now,” says N Bhanu Prasad, owner of Point Blank jeans (and one of the two Ford cars in town) as he outlines the million dollar export industry that clothes Australia and Sweden among other markets.

Swalpa fast indeed. Like so much of middle and rural India, Bellary parliamentary constituency reflects the changing face of Bharat, and Kudathinni is a good example of this metamorphosis. Some 24 hours after Sonia Gandhi and BJP’s Sushma Swaraj filed their nominations, the large Kandari family was as informed about the political developments in their backyard as some of the plusher drawing rooms in political Delhi.

Of course they knew Sonia had come to Bellary looking for a safe seat, Kandari Basavaraju, the family scion snorted, as an invalid paterfamilias ravedfeverishly on a charpoi and snotty kids scuttled around. “But after Kargil, we want a BJP government at the Centre and we will vote Congress in the State,” the kirana’ merchant said. A Toshiba TV set belted out Telugu film songs as the household women peeped out from dark interiors of the cavernous haveli.

If it is a political truism that increasing literacy and awareness levels diminishes the Congress vote bank (or allows a more informed choice), then Bellary again provides plenty of evidence. Typically, the voters who are lettered or who have access to information seem to be more inclined to vote BJP although the party has never had much of a presence beyond the town.

Literacy level in the district is around 50 per cent, but television is ubiquitous in the outlying villages and the echo of the gunfire in Kargil has resounded here. If the Congress party and Sonia Gandhi came here looking for a safe seat, they may have come to the wrong place at the wrong time.

Sure, the constituency hasreturned a Congress candidate in all 12 general elections, but in the last nine, the Congress vote share slid consistently and precipitously. “The times are changing quickly, the old days of Congress vote-bank is gone,” says Chandramma, not even looking up from milching a buffalo. Of course, they will vote BJP, but not because Sonia Gandhi is a foreigner, says her son Mahesh. They simply believe the BJP provides a better government at the Centre.

The good news for the Congress is that Sonia Gandhi’s foreigner status is not an issue. The bad news is that the non-Congress parties, which lost in the last few elections despite polling more votes because of fragmentation, have put up one candidate now, and they could not have chosen a better political sharpie than Sushma Swaraj. Looks-wise an archetype Bharatiya bahu, Swaraj is a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, busybody with a yen for languages; a nattering nari who can talk the legs of a dining table.

While Madam Congress President filed hernomination and hived off to attend to weightier matters in Delhi (she will deign to come down here twice for campaign meetings; on August 25 and September 3), Swaraj has camped at Hotel Pola Paradise (with an Internet parlour) for a full-blooded campaign that will see the whole nine yards.

Congressmen are apprehensive but not funked. “Madam will win by a record margin,” promises K C Kondiah, the unfortunate outgoing Congress Member of Parliament who has had to vacate his seat for the party’s prima donna and presiding deity. Masking his misery and disappointment well, Kondiah says the constituency comprises “30 per cent forwards and 70 per cent backwards; and the backwards still love the Gandhi family for the sacrifices they made for the country and the people.”

He’s not far wrong. The news flow slows down to trickle as you go deeper into the constituency, and a few miles down the road from Kudathinni, away from the television sets and primary schools (and lower down the social ladder), we flagged downJattangi Kaleshappa as he was hurrying home with a cart loaded with cattle feed. A Golla (cowherd; or Yadav in North Indian parlance) with a four-acre holding, Kaleshappa was sure who he would vote. Congress. Of course, he knew who Sonia Gandhi was. Rajiv Gandhi’s wife. Foreigner status? Rubbish. She came here and lived as a daughter-in-law; he did not go and live in Italy. Kaleshappa had heard of Italy but could not recollect Vajpayee’s name.

Deeper into the constituency, the land got harder and drier and bleaker as we stopped Rudramma and her mother-in-law headed away from their hard-scrabble existence to pick cotton in the irrigated lands closer to the river. Unlettered, ignorant and uncaring, they had only one thing on their mind. Food, and a day’s wages. Sonia Gandhi? Don’t know. BJP? Don’t know. Vajpayee? Don’t know. Kargil? Don’t know. Who will you vote for? Whoever you ask us to.

There’s some part of India that is still Bharat. Whether Bellary parliamentary constituency has enough of it willdetermine the fate of Congresswoman Sonia Gandhi.