 "Ravi Kishan (centre) may have his heart in the right place but many BJP workers see him as an object of some amusement.")
Walking into the campaign headquarters of Ram Bhuyal Nishad, Samajwadi Party (SP) candidate for the Gorakhpur Lok Sabha seat, at 7 am is slightly unsettling. The venue is someone’s vacant home. The air is thick with the smell of stale sweat. Scores of men can be seen rushing in and out of toilets in various stages of undress. There are no women.
The Nishad (boatmen) community is nearly 300,000-strong in Gorakhpur. “Their job? They fish by day and drink by night,” says an upper caste Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader, guffawing. The Nishads consider themselves Scheduled Caste, though they are counted
