February 23, 1998

East Delhi  Delhi
Electorate: 22.2 lakh
Main Rival: L B Tiwari (BJP)

Every now and then 60-year-old Shiela Dixit, plastered smile in place, seems to hold her breath as another draft of foul-smelling air drifts across. The Congress candidate is touring Karawal Nagar in East Delhi, just another colony that God forgot. Human settlements flourish near open drains, no streetlights, hills of garbage, no water taps. Congress corporators, however, remind Dixit that 40,000 voters live here. They are not as keen to remind her that these colonies have always been a Congress bastion.

Dixit, in the political wilderness for some years -- she last won from Kannauj in Uttar Pradesh in 1984 -- but resurrected at Sonia Gandhi's insistence, is being projected as a member of the Gandhi family. Not quite true. That her father-in-law Uma Shankar Dixit was Indira Gandhi's home minister and she a minister in Rajiv Gandhi's cabinet are sufficient to prove a relationship. Her show though is unspectacular. Suave and convent-bred she appears a misfit amidst such squalor. She attempts some BJP-baiting -- "they have done nothing for you" -- but in entirety she lacks conviction. She needs help and it comes from an unlikely source: sore from continued campaigning, she loses her voice. Even the microphone refuses to crackle into life.

A few people come out and stare. Then return to their homes. No matter who the leader is, they know poverty has come to stay. It's best for Dixit to hold her smile. And move on.

-- Sayantan Chakravarty

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