(This is the third in a series of insightful reports from the ground, titled The Race From India to Bharat. The author travels all across India as 960 million voters get ready to celebrate the largest festival of democracy in the world: the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. What do ordinary Indians think and feel about the past, present, and future of India? Are they convinced that the old fault lines are healing?)
The author spent about an hour in and around Dausa, a dusty town in Rajasthan looking for a large poster or cutout of the man.
For that matter, knowing them to be his “strongholds”, the author meandered around towns like Tonk and Bandikui looking for visible markers of his “hold” over the region. Barring some half-torn and frayed posters, there was nothing to suggest that this man spent five tireless years between 2013 and 2018 traversing across the state to win a famous victory for the Congress in the 2018 assembly elections.
There is enormous subterranean love and respect for him, but Sachin Pilot was almost an invisible presence as the author spent a few days travelling across some regions of this vast state. Of course, talking to two dozen people can by no means be a barometer of political trends and fortunes.