Last week in this column I promised to tell you what I discovered about popular reactions to Narendra Modi from traveling in rural Rajasthan. So here goes. My main reason for wanting to find out what rural people think of Modi was because in the news rooms and television studios of Delhi it is widely believed that his appeal is limited to young, urban Indians. My second reason for this particular journey was to find out if Modi is seen as a Hindutva hero or a leader who can bring prosperity to India. But, let the story tell itself.

The first village I stopped in after getting off the highway between Delhi and Jaipur was Behror. The last time I came this way the road was a strip of broken tarmac crowded with handcarts selling fruit and vegetables. Today there is a new road but built so narrow that it was hard for two buses to pass each other and when a goatherd appeared with a large flock of goats and sheep it became completely clogged.

When I arrived in the village of Behror I was directed to the house of the sarpanch, Sunil Bharadwaj, and stunned to find that he lived in a style rarely seen in rural India. His small living room was air-conditioned, had a marble floor on which were placed upholstered sofas. The sarpanch, a large, florid man, sat cross-legged on one of them and told me at the outset that it was his wife who was the sarpanch and that her work for the village had been so excellent that it wanted for neither electricity, clean water, schools, hospitals or anything. When I asked him why the streets were still filled with rotting garbage and smelly drains he muttered some inadequate explanation and hurried me through the gates of the new Rajiv Gandhi Sewa Kendra (community centre) equipped with computers and closed circuit television and air-conditioning. In its grounds was the cleanest toilet I have ever seen in a village. Rural India is changing fast.

After a long conversation about village development when I asked about Narendra Modi, Bharadwaj immediately became wary. Then he said carefully, “I cannot tell you what other people think of him but personally I don’t like him. They say he has done a lot of work for Gujarat and won three times. But, Sheila Dikshit has done a lot of work for Delhi and won three times so why can’t she become Prime Minister?”

On the way to my next stop, Mundawar, I saw a group of villagers sitting by the roadside and asked them if they thought that the Government of Ashok Gehlot had improved their lives in the past five years. They said in unison that there had been no improvement. Electricity and clean water were big problems and unemployment the biggest of them all. When I asked why they had not taken their grievances to their MLA they said they had not seen him since the last election. When I asked what they thought of Narendra Modi they said with astonishing unanimity, “India needs a man like Modi. Only a strong leader in Delhi can bring real change not someone like Maunmohan Singh.” Then they all laughed and asked me if I had ever heard the Prime Minister speak.

In Mundawar I talked to a large group of men in the Rajiv Gandhi Sewa Kendra and discovered that the construction of these new community centres is linked to work done under MNREGA. This one was not air-conditioned and I did not see any computers. On its large terrace, shaded by an old banyan tree, I talked to people who gave me a surprisingly sophisticated view of politics. One of them said, “The kind of development that is going on in this country seems designed to keep poor people in poverty forever. It is a form of ‘daspratha’ (feudalism) that has existed since the British were here. Only the rulers have changed.”

When I asked their views about Narendra Modi they said they thought he was the leader that India needed today. When I asked if this was because he was seen as a Hindutva hero they said that nobody was interested in temples and caste now. What people wanted was for their lives to improve and in their view Modi was someone who could make India prosperous. I asked how they knew this and they said they had listened to his speeches on television and seen what he had done for Gujarat. I went from Mundawar to Bibi Rani and a filthy village called Alie and then on towards Alwar and Sikandra before heading to Jaipur. And, everywhere I went I asked people about Modi and everywhere came upon a consensus that he would be good for India. Expectations of him are frighteningly high. People seem to believe that just by becoming Prime Minister he will be able to put an end to corruption and make India a prosperous country. Corruption in Delhi is a big issue.

In more general terms, what I discovered on this journey was that television and cellphones have brought the rest of the world much closer to the villages than ever before. I discovered that village shops now offer a range of consumer goods they did not before. Bisleri and Lays potato chips are ubiquitous along with soap, shampoo and Fair & Lovely products. What is worrying is that right outside these shops laden with consumer goods it is often possible to find an old lady or old man seated beside traditional terracotta containers selling drinking water for a few paise. So as we approached Jaipur and the roads became smoother and the landscape more urban, I found myself wondering how it was that cellphones and television had spread so deep into villages that remain mired in old-fashioned, ugly poverty. I also found myself wondering why villagers who now do their best to send their children to private schools and demand modern healthcare do not understand the need for clean streets and sanitation.

It is a warped kind of development that is taking place in rural India and it is hard to believe that Narendra Modi can change this entrenched and twisted pattern. But, that is what is expected of him because if my travels in rural Rajasthan are anything to go by, aspirations are now higher than the skies.