Over to the lok

India's 15th Lok Sabha election is just around the corner, with Indian voters set to cast their ballots between 16 April and 13 May in polling spread over five phases. In the midst of myriad timely issues – the post-Bombay attacks rhetoric has yet to die down, the full fallout of the economic crisis has yet to become clear, the strength of the recently composed left-led Third Front is yet to be understood – this period is historic in that four women are now in position to decide the country's future. Two of these are strong candidates to take over as prime minister; one rising from the ashes of corruption in the south, the other from Uttar Pradesh and having risen with the backing of Dalits and 'backward' castes. The third declined the prime-ministership the last time around, and the fourth is a Bengal banshee who has gone into collaboration with the Congress.

The first, of course, is Sonia Gandhi, the chairperson of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), which rules today. Her significant competition has come up from Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati, of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Her already highly anticipated showing has recently been given a fillip by the decision by the Third Front, being led by the left parties, to accept her as its leader, though without actually making a public declaration to this effect. Like a mantra, observers are repeating the traditional logic that, in India, the path to Delhi runs through UP, which holds 80 out of 545 Lok Sabha seats. Indeed, pundits enamoured with Mayawati's chances have even taken to comparing her with that other from-the-underclass political phenomenon of the decade, Barack Obama.