NeAfter an agenda set on the second-last morning of February, emotions sharpened through the summer and an ideological arsenal almost spent by autumn, Gujarat may seem a bore. Narendra Modi vs Shankersinh Vaghela, BJP chief minister vs Congress state unit president, Spitfire vs Hurricane: the prizefight that just goes on and on. Every journalist, sociologist and fulminating analyst has been to Gujarat and, well, "done it". The vote's only a formality, they tell you. It's all over.

ALL FOR ONE: Modi's focus on Hindutva makes this election a personal referendum

Yet, in so many ways, it has only just begun. Take Saurabh Patel, 44, podgy and earnest. He's also probably the richest MLA in the country. His trading business is estimated at Rs 250 crore a year. One of his grandfathers was the only Patel king in Gujarat, the other was the president of the Ahmedabad Stock Exchange. He is the son-in-law of Ramnikbhai Ambani, the formidable Dhirubhai's brother; presumably, Patel could call Anil and Mukesh "saala" and get away with it.

Right now, clever lines and irreverence are the last thing on his mind. Far removed from the Philadelphia university that gave him his MBA degree, Patel is sitting outside a hut in Badhla village, Botad, Bhavnagar, deep in Gujarat's Saurashtra region. He's reminding his voters of what he has done for them, of how he has maintained direct contact, of Bt cotton and drinking water, of how he craves their indulgence on December 12, 2002, the day India's most newsmaking state this year elects its new Assembly.

Patel was a political rookie when, in 1998, the BJP nominated him from Botad, a seat the party had never won. Call it beginner's luck. Patel, who says he didn't take a penny from his party for his previous campaign and won't this time either-with a Rs 250 crore turnover, are you surprised?-won. All 105 villages in Botad lacked adequate drinking water in 1998. "Today," says Patel, "100 have drinking-water pipelines."

Godhra, CENTRAL GUJARAT Haresh Bhatt (BJP): SPEARHEAD Main Rival Rajendrasinh Patel, Congress Constituency stack-up: Godhra has 1.86 lakh voters, 58,000 of whom belong to Patel's OBC Kshatriya clan. Another 38,000 are Muslim. THE LARGER POINT For Bhatt (a Bajrang Dal-VHP nominee) to win, the Hindu consolidation will have to be absolute and justify the BJP's hardline campaign. If the party loses Godhra, well... "This won't be a victory for just me. It will be a victory for Hindutva." EYEING THE TREND Bhatt (centre) is one of two VHP men given BJP tickets. Hindutva is poll issue No. 1. In a tacit recognition of the "Hindu vote", the Congress manifesto is silent on punishing those who caused the post-Godhra riots.

Sami- Harij, NORTH GUJARAT Mahendrasinh Vaghela (Cong): HEIR POWER Main Rival Dilipsinh Thakore, BJP Constituency stack-up: Sami-Harij has a 1.70 lakh electorate but its 75,000 OBC Kshatriya and upper-caste Rajput voters give that combine a veto. THE LARGER POINT If Vaghela wins, it will mean that his father Shankersinh's attempt to check the Modi wave with Kshatriya assertion has its takers. If he loses, Hindutva would have overwhelmed all caste calculations. "Sami-Harij has been kept so backward it has no water ... Even mobile phones have no network coverage here." EYEING THE TREND Eleven of the Congress' 182 candidates are sons of politicians. They include the heirs of former chief ministers S.S. Vaghela, Amarsinh Chaudhary, Chimanbhai Patel and Madhavsinh Solanki as well as of former Union ministers B.K. Gadhvi and Yogendra Makwana. The BJP, in contrast, has only two "star sons", one of whom is Thakore.

Botad, SAURASHTRA Saurabh Patel (BJP): MEANS BUSINESS Main Rival Odhavji Navadia, Congress Constituency stack-up: Botad's 1.85 lakh voters include 45,000 Patels who usually vote unitedly. THE LARGER POINT If Patel wins, it will ratify the BJP's claim to have done good work in the villages. If he loses, it will mean Saurashtra hasn't forgiven Keshubhai's ouster. "My message to my voters is: when you think of development, think of Saurabh Patel." EYEING THE TREND Industry is unhappy with the BJP for Gujarat's economic slowdown after years of heady growth. The party says it has focused on rural issues like better roads and water supply. December 12 will decide if it's right.

Hindutva is there all right, somewhere at the back of everybody's mind; but it's not the fulcrum of Patel's campaign. The plutocrat is making democracy's five-yearly pilgrimage to the proletariats. He's wooing the OBC communities that make up a third of his constituency. He's trying to keep his fellow Patels happy. He has even got more than an eye on the few thousand Kathis-said to be descendants of the central Asian Shakas who invaded Gujarat nearly 2,000 years ago and from whom the region gets its historical name, Kathiawar.

Money, family, party: Patel knows nothing will help him on Judgement Day. Only the trust he evokes in his electorate will. That's why he talks of his record as MLA, of "development and security ... development and security". The second is not a reference to religious riots, only to local goons who coerce money out of petty shopkeepers and farmers. In another of those enthralling, enchanting, delicious, delectable paradoxical ironies and ironical paradoxes that is Indian society, it is some aggressive Dalit groups who are said to be running an extortion racket in Botad.

Patel was a great favourite of former chief minister Keshubhai Patel and, as he hastens to add, "gets along very well" with Modi too. Now it's the Keshubhai factor that's worrying, if not Patel, at least some of the 57 other BJP candidates in Saurashtra-Kutch. The party won 52 of these seats in 1998.

TO THE LAST: Vaghela is banking on caste, unpopularity of BJP MLAs

Now it faces two challenges. First, voter disgust with individual non-performing MLAs. Second, the substantial Patel community's anger at local man Keshubhai's replacement by Modi in 2001. As a local MLA admits, "If we get 35-40 seats we should be lucky. Many of us won in 1998 as people felt their MLA would have influence with the chief minister. That no longer holds."

Caste is certainly on top of Mahendrasinh Vaghela's mind. Shankersinh's 37-year-old son is making his debut from the Sami-Harij constituency in Patan district, famous for Patola saris and, unlike the Gujarati stereotype, Uttar Pradesh-type backwardness. On the face of it, the junior Vaghela has been handed an impossible seat by his father, one held by Dilipsinh Thakore, outgoing prohibition minister.

Actually, Shankersinh is attempting one of those great experiments of Indian politics. Viraji, Dilipsinh's father, was Sami-Harij's MLA from 1975-90. His son won in 1990, lost in 1995 but regained the seat in 1998. The Thakores, like Vaghela, draw from the Rajput-obc Kshatriya combine which traditionally supports the Congress.

When Vaghela was in the BJP, he built up caste-specific leaders to offset the influence of Madhavsinh Solanki, the Congress' Kshatriya strongman. The Thakores were among his proteges. Today the old fox has sent his son to reclaim his legacy. What's more, Solanki is now Vaghela's partner in the Congress. If Mahendrasinh defeats Dilipsinh, it will mean his father's plan to use a caste coalition centred on Kshatriya pride has, to whatever degree, checked Modi's overarching "Hindu pride". If he loses, the BJP is probably looking at a majority of terrifying proportions.

Terrifying is decidedly the word you would use to describe Haresh Bhatt's moustache. A former state Bajrang Dal president, Bhatt, also bears a striking resemblance to the late film star Premnath. He has been brought in to win Godhra, the very eye of the storm, as it were, from Rajendrasinh Patel (Congress). Patel's an OBC Kshatriya, as are 58,000 of his voters. Add the 38,000 Muslims and, in a normal election, you would already have a majority sewn up. Poll 2002 is anything but normal.

Bhatt, 53, a Brahmin and former air force technician, took to the saffron cause in 1984, when a cow was killed and its remains thrown outside the office of the Ahmedabad-based security agency he ran. Thereafter, he became a byword for Hindutva, mobilising huge numbers for the kar seva in Ayodhya in December 1992, distributing trishuls in a symbolic arming of Hindus.

If Gujarat's season of religious rage triumphs over all else (see box), a Hindu consolidation will make Bhatt Godhra's MLA, undoing every calculation of caste and incumbency and local appeal. His candidacy has made Godhra, like Botad and Harij-Sami, a bellwether seat in an election that, seen from the ground, the grassroots and the cowdung heap, is still just so competitive.

As national leaders swoop down on the state over the coming week for that one final pre-election blitz, Gujarat's year of tumult will inch towards closure. In more ways than democracy intends, December 12 will be a moment of catharsis.