KOLKATA/CHENNAI: In the teeming Indian metropolis of Calcutta, a campaign mural shows Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee dressed as a soccer player kicking the "common man" and telling him to feel good.
As India's mammoth general election draws to a close, Vajpayee's "India shining" campaign is running into trouble, failing to resonate with ordinary people who feel excluded from an economic boom which has benefited the urban middle classes.
Nowhere more so than in West Bengal and its capital Kolkata, where the hammer and sickle flag flies over mud-walled homes throughout the state. Communists are expected to hold onto their tally of 29 of the 42 seats on offer in Monday's voting.
More than 200 million Indians go to the polls on Monday in the fifth and final stage of the election, with 182 seats up for grabs in the toughest phase of the election for Mr Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The BJP's Hindu-nationalist message cuts little sway in West Bengal, a province where 23 per cent of the population are Muslim and with little history of communal violence.
"If you want peace, vote communist," hundreds of campaigners chanted as they marched through Kolkata on the final day of campaigning on Saturday. The communists are not officially allied with the main opposition Congress party but say they have not ruled out joining them in a future government.
In the southern state of Tamil Nadu, which accounts for 39 seats and is the other big focus in the fifth round of the election, the BJP is not in much better shape. Here, too, Hindu nationalism has never been popular, but what really damaged the BJP was the defection of the local DMK party from the ruling coalition to the opposition just ahead of the election.
As a result Vajpayee's party has been forced into bed with a plump former actress, the state's chief minister Jayaram Jayalalitha, best known for her flashy jewellery and imperious style.
The romance between the BJP and Jayalalitha has been an on-off affair. She originally abandoned Mr Vajpayee's government in 1998, a move which helped force elections the following year.
In a country where voters traditionally punish incumbents, Jayalalitha has not helped her cause by banning the Hindu religious practice of animal sacrifice, cutting subsidized food rations and abolishing free electricity for farmers.
Vajpayee's personal popularity may not be enough to save his allies from a poor showing in Tamil Nadu, analysts say. "Vajpayee is a good man. Those who are with him are the problem," said scooter-rickshaw driver G. Arumugam in Chennai, the state capital.
An opinion poll by NDTV and the Indian Express suggests the BJP and their allies will win just 67 of the 182 seats at stake in 16 states in Monday's voting, down from just over 80 in 1999. That would leave them with just 240 to 260 seats overall, some way short of a majority in the 545-seat lower house of parliament, the poll said. -Reuters
