PATNA: By the potholes and wheat fields of India's most lawless state, Bihar, one of most recognizable candidates in the country's general elections is taking lunch at a roadside cafe with his campaign team.
Rajan Tiwari's face features regularly on the front pages of India's newspapers, but the celebrity of the 31-year-old political science graduate has nothing to do with notable public service or his relative youth.
Charged in two dozen cases on counts of murder, criminal conspiracy and illegal use of arms, Mr Tiwari is an example of India's most disturbing electoral trend: the criminalization of politics.
He is supposed to be behind bars, awaiting trial on serious criminal charges, but Mr Tiwari's political clout is such that he can roam around the countryside, with a police escort, effectively beyond the reach of the law.
"There is no wrong in hurting the guilty men in society. I don't mind that," says Tiwari, who is a legislator in the state government. "No rich man has ever refused me when I come and ask for donations to help the common man. It is just taking a few drops of water from an ocean."
Criminal candidates have spread across northern India; they were made famous by Phoolan Devi, the "Bandit Queen", a notorious killer who became a legislator. Devi was murdered in Delhi two years after entering politics.
But nowhere is the phenomenon more prevalent than in Bihar, a poverty-stricken state of 80 million people. Here, the electorate would go to the polls on Monday in the second phase of India's general elections.
Activists say that up to 20 per cent of parliamentary candidates have criminal charges, including murder and kidnapping, filed against them. "There are two problems," said Parveen Amanullah of Bihar Election Watch.
"One is the law only bars convicted criminals from running in elections for six years, so anybody facing charges is free to run. Secondly, nobody these days gets convicted. The cases just run and run."
Bihar is bigger than Austria. Less than half of the population can sign their name, and only one in 10 households have electricity. Despite being the land where Buddha found enlightenment, Bihar is today India's heart of darkness.
In the minds of many Indians, it is a byword for the worst the country has to offer - inescapable poverty, indescribable feudal and caste cruelty, repeated bombings by Maoist rebels, chronic misrule, crumbling roads, and the dimming of law and order.
But with development and philanthropy as their slogans, jailbird candidates have been girding themselves for electoral battle. In a wing of the main hospital in Bihar's capital, Patna, is the burly, six-foot figure of Pappu Yadav.
The 37-year-old faces 26 criminal charges, including the murder of a local political rival and kidnapping with intent to murder. Moved from jail after his leg became infected, Mr Yadav is directing his re-election campaign 60 miles from his electorate in Punea, where he is the sitting MP.
His supporters in the ward outnumber the solitary guard, and there is a constant stream of visitors touching Mr Yadav's feet, the traditional Indian gesture of obeisance. In between calls on one of three mobile phones, Mr Yadav explained that he had kept down hospital fees, connected villages to the electricity grid and built a sporting arena in his constituency.
"I fought as a young man and I am still fighting for the ordinary man," he said. "The people know that, which is why last time I won my seat by 286,000 votes." Most importantly, Mr Yadav has secured the backing of the state's ruling party and its partners to fight the election.
As a result, his wife, a political novice, has also been given a seat to contest. Mr Yadav's political success, say analysts, lies partly in the men and muscle he can muster for a campaign, and partly in his name.
"In Bihar, the politics reflect the state's caste-ridden social order," said MJ Akbar, the editor of India's Asian Age newspaper and a former MP from Bihar. "What you have is a powerful electoral combination between Muslims and Yadavs (traditionally dairy farmers) who make up a third of the voters in Bihar. Since they have been in power, the Yadavs have soaked up all the benefits, while the state's education and health system collapsed."
Most Indians blame Laloo Prasad Yadav, Bihar's chief minister from 1990 to 1997. Convicted of corruption six years ago, Laloo, as he is known, now rules through his wife, Rabri Devi. -Dawn/The Guardian News Service.