Although Shorom is only a few kilometers from the nearest town there is no paved road: you rattle along a rutted track between fields, under constant threat from diesel-spewing tractors and ambling bullock carts. Open sewers still run in the middle of its narrow lanes, rendering civic sanitation an alien concept, and forcing residents to walk in a zigzag of hops and skips to avoid the toxic rivulets of filth. The panchayat ghar in the chaupal, it is true, had a recent lick of whitewash, and was packed with an audience of old men with rheumy eyes and elaborate turbans, and small boys dangling from the branches of an ancient neem. Not a single woman was present: you sensed rather than saw their veiled presence on far rooftops or behind half-open doorways and barred windows.
Here is what had most noticeably changed: the constant revving and roaring of motorbikes in lanes, the beeping of cell phones throughout and - lo and behold! - a cordless hand-held mike in which the candidate and others spoke with pitch-perfect audio.
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One other thing, remarkably and heartwarmingly, remained unchanged. At the end of his speech the candidate was cheered but also quizzed in a polite but often sharp Q&A. What would he do about ensuring better prices for sugarcane crop, loans to tide over debt and the promise of a high school? One wag rose to ask if he would be bringing in Hema Malini for entertainment. As political meetings go, it was a rousingly informal and satisfactory affair. There were only four plastic chairs for the candidate and his cohorts; everyone sat on the ground or milled around.
This sort of directly interpersonal exchange between contestant and voter has all but vanished in rapidly urbanising India. Rallies by leaders like Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi I recently attended in the working-class hotbeds of Northeast and South Delhi constituencies were virtually interchangeable for the sheer physical distance placed between stage and audience. Their lines were prepared, the political content (by way of attack and counterattack, criticism and self-congratulation) much the same, their appearances carefully groomed. The spontaneity of response was missing, so there was little space for establishing emotional rapport. One left both meetings in a blur of clutter and clamour. Like the chairs they sat on, the crowds seemed both jaded and rented, grabbing at freebies of Modi and Rahul T-shirts, bottles of cold water and packed lunches and teatime snacks.
Political rallies are now event-managed Bollywood extravaganzas. Thumping anthems pour from ghetto-blasters, audiences pass through checks akin to airport security, and the humongous media presence is corralled and contained.
Up until Rajiv Gandhi's assassination at an election rally in 1991, campaigns were quite different. In the run-up to the Congress party's humiliating defeat in 1977, I hung round Gauriganj rest house in Amethi long enough for the prime minister's reluctant, irascible son Sanjay to suddenly pop out and give me an interview. The following summer, in an arduous road trip she made from Faizabad to Azamgarh to campaign for Mohsina Kidwai's by-election, the imperiously aloof Indira Gandhi offered me a seat in her car between stops. When I asked how she coped with the heat and stress of punishing journeys, she tendered the following agony aunt advice: Eat frugally, drink plain nimbu pani, but change your clothes three times a day. "It's not some yoga routine," she helpfully added. "Just what athletes do when they're preparing for the finals."
BJP leaders like Atal Behari Vajpayee and L K Advani were equally courteous in one-on-one interactions on campaigns. In 1993, the year after the demolition of the Babri Masjid, on a pleasant car ride with Mr Advani from Kochi to Nagarcoil, I asked how devout he personally was: "I mean, do you pray every day?" He responded with a broad grin: "If you mean, do I sit there tinkling bells every morning, the answer is NO."
Fat chance the media or public could get up so close and personal today - much less penetrate the cordon sanitaire of bodyguards, bouncers and personal advisers that drown our leaders in a haze of white noise.