Or with dirt and squalor and corruption that never get better, only worse. But in these elections, there are finally some such constituents who are rubbing their candidates' noses in the dirt that India's cities are. Now Kanpur is a particularly horrible city. It is a grey, grimy wasteland you could only want to flee from. The times I have visited, that's how I felt.
Villages are in as bad, or worse, shape.
Years pass, but nothing ever improves. There are many possible recipients for the blame in all of this, and surely some among those are our politicians. They have never cared to come to grips with the ordinary problems that make life so hard for so many Indians. They make promises, sure. Also, they sell us wars and nuclear bombs and the supposed danger that religions are in and the foreign origins of people.