Phoolan is now just another name in carpet country

However, spoiling this equation are the Congress and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidates. The former has fielded Hadi Ali Ansari, with an eye on the Muslims, while the BSP has more or less the same vote base as the SP.

Also ranged against Phoolan is the BJP’s Virendra Singh, who won the seat in 1991 and is perhaps her most formidable opponent. He is counting on the 38 per cent upper castes in the constituency.

Phoolan, who won the seat last time with a 40,000-vote margin, isbraving these odds with an extensive tour of Mirzapur. From eight in the morning till late at night, she is on the road, travelling from village to village and meeting to meeting in this mountainous stretch of Vindhyachal.

Uncomfortable questions are forestalled with ready answers. “Because of the legal proceedings against me, I could not get time to pay visits to the constituency,” a suave Phoolan tells a group enraged at the neglect of the seat. At another place, she claims: “I did get funds released for the development of Mirzapur but all were diverted by Mayawati to Ambedkar projects.”

However, not many are fooled by the act, particularly as Phoolan seems to have neither any personal or political agenda, nor the vision and language of a leader. Also, as Ram Awadh Murya, a local resident, points out, “This time she is in the fray like any other contestant vying for a parliamentary seat.” Phoolan does address some issues like illiteracy and “excesses on women” which hit home in this backwardregion. “Don’t let your child remain illiterate like me,” she appeals, urging the women to come forward against torture.

Women, in fact, remain her most ardent vote base and Phoolan targets them — especially those belonging to Scheduled Tribes like Kols and Bhils and other backward castes — in her appeals. Women had voted almost en masse for her in 1996.

In contrast, the BJP candidate has picked up the one issue that affects almost everyone here: carpet-weaving. Mirzapur, known the world over for its carpets, has been feeling the pinch ever since the West cracked down on the child labour employed in the industry.

The BJP’s Virendra Singh assures the electorate that he will “expose” the “foreign hand” that has strangulated the region’s carpet economy. With his party’s government in the State already ensuring the much needed 24-hour power supply to the carpet belt, Singh’s promises definitely find takers.“The regular supply of power is one way the carpet industry, which touched a high ofexporting Rs 25,000 crore worth of goods, may come back on the rails,” Parvez, a leading carpet exporter of Bhadohi, where most of the carpet units are based, says.

Singh also promises to take other steps for the development of the region. But credible as he may sound, most have learnt to take such assurances with a pinch of salt. “Phoolan too assured to make Amethi-type development,” notes Ram Dhan, a teacher from Gidbara village. “But we are there where we were before the 1996 elections. Promises during elections should not be taken for real.”