Campaign Diary

In March 2009, Manvendra Singh set out to defend the Barmer seat in the Lok Sabha. He had won it by a record margin in 2004 and had spent five years as its member of Parliament. Standing as the BJP candidate, he spent two months crossing a vast constituency that stretches over Rajasthan's Thar desert, travelling 34,000 kilometres in heat that often approached 50 degrees Celsius.

Campaign Diary is his day-by-day record of that effort. Along the way he met herders and village headmen, communities of traditional balladeers and craftsmen, youth groups, veteran political fixers, Muslim pirs, Jain munis and Hindu priests. The entries show how local concerns, national policy and international events all reach the voter at the grass-roots level.

The diary captures the heat and dust of the trail, the intrigue and infighting within parties, and the moving and comic moments that fill an Indian election. It is both a portrait of democracy at work in one corner of the country and a frank reflection on what a life in politics gives and what it takes away.