Two hundred feet from the ground at a deafening 200 KMPH in any of the five helicopters the BJP has hired, Uttar Pradesh's vast heartland looks the same. An army of waving hands, a group of white khadi-clad politicians with garlands, a swirl of dust and at least one Toyota Qualis. But for BJP's star campaigners, party General Secretary Pramod Mahajan, Union Health Minister Sushma Swaraj and former chief minister Rajnath Singh, each helicopter ride brings with it its own expectations. If one is carrying the burden of success in Rajasthan, another is a crowdpuller who is on top of the cadre wish list while the third is a regional strongman in search of national validation. The battleground is the same for all, as is the collective aim-save Uttar Pradesh for the BJP, where the carpet- bombing by national leaders is such that candidates are having to turn away B-list campaigners like Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.

SUSHMA SWARAJ
The Loan Warrior
Pasu Bazar ka Maidan, Ghazipur, Fatehpur: 3 p.m.

ON HIGH GROUND: Swaraj has added value to the poll campaign in the state

The last time Swaraj came to Ghazipur, a mere dot in Fatehpur district in 1979, she met Indira Gandhi at the railway station. "It was a meeting I will always remember," says Swaraj to the crowd gazing at her open-mouthed. She has just finished a rousing 20-minute speech, variations of which she has been delivering across the country-starting from Satna in Madhya Pradesh on April 6. "We will never accept someone who calls tulsi basil, Ganga Ganges and gobar cowdung," she says. The men applaud. "Gaon aur garib ka dard kehne ke liye gaon ki kacchi galiyon mein chalna padta hai. Kya Sonia Gandhi ne kabhi panghat pe paniharan dekhi hai? Kya phool bechti maliharan dekhi hai? Kya ghas katti ghasiyaran dekhi hai? Kya kapde dhoti dhoban dekhi hai? (Does Sonia Gandhi know anything about India's villages? Anything at all)?" Sonia is her magnificent obsession, but the hamari behen vs vidheshi bahu rhetoric works. The women become emotional, children roar. The 52-year-old puts her hand on two-time MP Ashok Patel. As if on cue, his eyes fill up with tears. By the time the campaigning ends, Swaraj will have addressed about 90 rallies, sometimes angry, sometimes evocative, always energetic. For someone who has been in the public eye since she was 10, performing on demand is not new. "Kuch khone ke liye kuch pana hota hai," she says, adding that she has been addressing rallies for the past 27 years. She remembers the day she began: February 1, 1977, in Muzaffarpur. "Tab to kranti thi (it was a revolution)," she says. "No one was sitting at home."

On loan to the Save Uttar Pradesh Campaign from the central leadership, she is most in demand among the cadres. And there is every reason why. Sit with a group of women sporting Swaraj badges near a makeshift stage in Shuklaganj in Unnao constituency, and they will tell you. "She is what we want to be," says former zila panchayat head Kamal Kumari. Say it to Swaraj and she glows. "When they see me, they feel I am one of them, not someone from a raj gharana." Swaraj addresses at least five meetings a day, travelling from car to helicopter, helicopter to car to rally ground, back to helicopter. Sometimes dodging clouds, sometimes circling several times before landing on a tiny brick strip in the middle of a field, subsisting on two rotis, some vegetables cooked by a party worker (in the case of Lucknow it is former state minister Sheema Rizvi), some jaggery, grams, almonds and, occasionally, the company of her friends. Her faithful Man Friday, Anil Dubey, travels with her, pulling out of a bag whatever she needs-whether it is a wet tissue, a quick glass of nimbu pani (made 6,000 ft in the air) or a comb.

There is no privacy. Even when she goes to the bathroom in a college in Fatehpur, the entire village follows. "We saw you delivering the speech in Parliament when Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee's 13-day government fell," says a young woman. "We cried."

Later in her five-star hotel suite, freshly bathed, changed into a salwar kameez, digging into dahi bhalla from a local chaat house, she turns and says, "Now do you see what I mean by the real India? And how far removed people in the cities are?"

PRAMOD MAHAJAN
Master of the Plane
Lalbag Park, Bainiganj, Sitapur: 3.30 p.m.

REMOTE CONTROL: Mahajan has successfully clubbed war room work with mass contact

When Pramod Mahajan descends from the helicopter at Bainiganj, Sitapur, flashing his pens (Waterman in breast pocket and Mont Blanc in the waist pocket), his Ray-Ban and black Reeboks, followed by chief aide Vivek Maitra, it is easy to be blinded by the hard-won gloss. He is coming from one rally and going to another near Lucknow. The 54-year-old will spend the evening at a Lucknow five-star hotel, where he has booked an entire floor (coincidentally a floor below independent candidate Ram Jethmalani's campaign office), reviewing the work of his election team.

It is an all-consuming job, and since April 1 it has taken him even to Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Aware of the reputation that precedes him now, Mahajan says: "In Rajasthan we had six months to prepare and a clear leader. Here we were brought in while elections were on, and though Atalji is our neta, party discipline is really not up to the mark here." Clearly, though, his team's work has paid off. If former state minister Kusum Rai turns up, dripping diamonds for Swaraj's Lucknow meeting, she does the same for Rajnath Singh-grabbing the mike and declaiming about her sacrifice in giving up power for the party. Singh wades through muck to address a predominantly Thakur area in Allahabad constituency though candidate Murli Manohar Joshi has not turned up.

Mahajan's one addiction, apart from a tongue that has a mind of its own, is tea. Maitra carries his flask, refilling it at various stops. Time is something he cannot indulge in-when he begins speaking for candidate Janardhan Mishra, he keeps his Titan watch on the podium, occasionally glancing at it even when delivering punchlines: "Laloo ne kaha, Sonia nahin to main hoon na." Or this: "I haven't married into the Gandhi-Nehru family, yet you have come to listen to me. Thank you." While awaiting his turn to speak, Mishra briefs him about Sitapur's request: a rally by either Vajpayee or Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani. Mahajan, the first non-Hindi heartland star, says he will consider it.

As the man in charge of the campaign, he is responsible for the strategic deployment of campaigners. Not only has he ensured this is done on the basis of caste but he has also visited 70 Uttar Pradesh constituencies himself-which means by May 8, when the last bell is rung on E-2004, he will have been to 96 constituencies nationwide. Kalyan Singh's return has breathed some life into the campaign: "Otherwise, with Ajit Singh, Mulayam Singh and Kalyan getting together, we would have been wiped out from west to east." Yet ask him for a seat projection in Uttar Pradesh, and he shakes his head: "I will be very happy with 35."

RAJNATH SINGH
Man in the Middle
Bharua Samerpur, Hamirpur, Bundelkhand: 2.40 p.m.

ULTIMATE NATIVE: Singh accepts his limitations, but wants to go beyond them

As he sits cross-legged in his helicopter, chewing paan and writing an equation in a notebook, it is easy to mistake the 53-year-old for the teacher that he used to be. But Singh is just resting before yet another whistlestop tour on a journey that formally began on April 6 and has by now included 120 meetings. As he introduces "kisan ka beta" Surendra Singh Rajput, the candidate in Hamirpur, he plunges headlong into a speech-it is the seventh time he is doing so today and there is another rally to go.

The day begins early for the man who has to prove he is more than a Thakur leader-an internal survey shows he has 54 per cent acceptability among Jats and 34 per cent among Gujjars, he says. The architect of the BJP's victory in the December polls in Chhattisgarh holds a meeting at his Lucknow home that neighbours Mulayam's and then sets off for the day. An orange here, a peda there, a few grapes and some cashew nuts, that is food on the run. Food, in fact, often figures in his speech: as Union agriculture minister, he says he announced a farm insurance scheme, started a farmer call centre, and most of all, ensured "beggar" India not only became self-sufficient but provided grain to 25 nations. But what brings the house down is this: "Sonia left her country for marriage. Atalji left marriage for his nation. Soniaji ko PM kaise bana sakte hain?"

Close up, he is more cautious. He dwells carefully on Kalyan's return. "I have never spoken against him. " It has much to with how big his heart is and how that is proportional to the extent of his happiness, he says. It is an equation in search only of power.