Victor worked as a local school teacher, but dressed in jeans and a lime green polo shirt, set off with sharp rimless spectacles, he looked as if he could have been an accountant or IT consultant. Akhilesh Yadav seemed like a decent man, he told me, but his party, a powerful presence in the local area, was full of dacoits (bandits). Their rule had delivered little for his town, but the local council was led by a Samajwadi politician elected a few years before, who had enjoyed a rapid transformation in her own fortunes. Victor simply called her begum, a word that means ‘powerful woman’. ‘It all
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