About the ´óÏó´«Ã½ India Election Train
Hi. I'm Soutik Biswas and I'm the India online editor for ´óÏó´«Ã½ News. I have also worked with Indian newspapers and magazines and am a from .
Over the next month, join me on a journey to explore and from those they vote to power.
The world's biggest election is now under way. A highlight of will be a cross-country journey by train. Join me on a 18-day, eight-city, 6,000km tour from which I will be bringing you stories of the journey and the people I meet on it.
I and my ´óÏó´«Ã½ colleagues will sleep, eat and work on the train. During the stops, we will meet and interview politicians and businessmen and give you a feel of what they're thinking on the street in India.
The world's biggest election lives up to its name because Indians love to vote. A cluster of villages on the Andhra-Maharashtra border once voted twice after they were given voting cards by administrations in both states! The poor vote more than the privileged. Peasants go to polls defying Maoist diktats. I remember a cloth merchant from Bhopal who cheerily fought elections against five different prime ministers and lost every time. He fought elections, he said once, "to make everyone realise that democracy was meant for one and all".
I am city-bred, belong to India's thriving middle class, and don't claim to be an authority on every aspect of India's complicated society and politics. But there is no greater pleasure than coming to understand how complex multi-ethnic societies like India work: I have learned more political science and sociology trawling India's cities and villages than from my college textbooks.
India poses formidable challenges to a journalist. To fathom Indian democracy is to find clues to the riddles of human lives and behaviour. And there is no better time to go looking for answers than during a general election.
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