(This is the fourth 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?)
On a lark, the author decided to make a small detour while crossing Rampur (Uttar Pradesh) on the highway. Google Maps showed 15 kilometres. When I reached, I saw a security guard making futile attempts to stop students without helmets riding inside a university campus on their two-wheelers. Professor Swati Singh appeared more successful as the students did stop and sheepishly said sorry to her.
I was at the gate of Mohammed Ali Jauhar University, an institution nursed and launched by Azam Khan, the 75-year-old Samajwadi Party co-founder who once lorded over Rampur and the region around it as a “Sultanate” chieftain. Life has not been easy for the aging warhorse in recent times. He has been in and out of jail and is disqualified from contesting elections because of a conviction. There are 80 cases or so against him. Soon after Yogi Adityanath won a second term as chief minister, life became even more difficult for him.