The real candidate

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress are hotly contesting the 90-seat Haryana Assembly elections and the gated communities of Gurgaon have not been spared the rigours of the campaign. Hired auto-rickshaws mounted with loudspeakers periodically do the rounds with ear-splitting, feedback-distorting exhortations to the voter. The spiel is a fairly standardised one: a one-liner informing voters why they should vote for such and such party candidate, asking them to "press the button" on this or that party symbol on the electronic voting machine, all of which is rounded off with a rousing party slogan. The BJP autorickshaw has an interesting variation on this message to voters. After the usual pitch, the first cheers go to Narendra Modi ("Narendra Modi ki jai," repeated three times) only after which the announcer yells "Bharatiya Janata Party ki jai," leaving voters in little doubt who they were really voting for if they chose the BJP.