(This is the tenth 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?)
(Read part one here, part two here, part three here, part four here, part five here, part six here, part seven here, part eight here, and part nine here.)
How a decade is enough to dissolve all the pomp and glory.
The author was here more than a decade ago when there was an air of festivity, celebration, and an unbridled display of political and muscle power. Folks were gigging about the voluptuous dance moves of some starlet who was about to perform on stage the next night.
Banners and hoardings to hail the young chief minister (CM) and his father could be seen everywhere. The public display of an in-your-face assertion of political power was abundantly visible everywhere on the streets.