•Coomi Kapoor: The feeling in Delhi is that the BJP will be the runner-up in this election and will not be part of the next government. What is your understanding from the campaigning you have done?

I campaigned extensively in my constituency, Hazaribagh, for three-and-a-half months, during which I covered 10-12 villages a day. I covered areas I hadn’t been to for 20-25 years as they were Naxalite-affected. Sitting in Delhi, we are completely divorced from the ground reality, and this applies to the media as well. Issues vary from towns and villages to industrial areas. My constituency has villages, two major towns and a large coal belt. The pitch has to be different in each of the three areas. In the villages, the issue is the famous bijli-sadak-pani, education, electricity and women’s issues. You can’t lecture them about Pakistan or economic policies. You sound foolish. You have to respond to their demands. They sensed a lack of credibility in me and in the political class in general. They asked me if I would return only after five years. In the bazaars and towns, I spoke of state and national issues and President’s rule in Jharkhand. That rang a bell. In the coal mine area, the most important issue was the Provident Fund interest rates which had cost me the last election because I reduced it from 12.5 to 9.5 per cent. The UPA government reduced it further to 8.5 per cent and that has stood me in good stead in the coal belt. There, the issues are of pollution, dust, working conditions. People come back in the evening laden with black dust. Varun Gandhi was no issue there. Other major national issues don’t concern them. Ottavio Quattrocchi and Bofors, for instance, are not issues in rural areas. In urban areas, they would be. Price rise and kerosene were issues in rural areas. As for terrorism, it’s all about local terrorism, Naxalism. But they don’t like to hear anti-Naxalite talk either as they could be punished for even hearing such talk.

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