This may be my last article for the Guardian on Cif, just as Aravind Adiga might be the last Indian to win the Man Booker prize, unless, of course, the Samajwadi party is trounced in the parliamentary elections under way in India.
Label it an incredible stunt, the collapse of a regressive mindset, or the start of the Talibanisation of India, but Samajwadi, one of several regional parties who could hold the key to the formation of the next government, wants to ban both the English language and computers in India.
The party's manifesto is dystopic, matching Orwell's 1984 for its sheer simplicity, declaring that wherever computers rob people of jobs, they must go. Hands will be put to use instead of computers, it says. The Samajwadi party is one of the two key regional parties in Uttar Pradesh – India's most populated state and hence the one with the largest number of seats (80 out of 552) in the lower house of parliament, Lok Sabha.
As anyone can imagine, a lot of hands (and legs) would be needed to deliver a 1,000-word article for the Guardian from India to London – and translate it, if I'm obliged to write it in Hindi or Urdu. Maximising the amount of labour involved suits a party that draws its influence from this highly backward, criminalised and corrupt state.
The incredible phenomenon in Indian politics today is the sheer number of powerful regional parties that can ally with either the Congress or BJP, or join a third front after the elections and decide who rules India for the next five years. The most significant power centres will prove to be neither the Congress (the oldest, and one-time monopoliser of power), nor the rightwing Hindutva force, the Bharatiya Janata party – but such regional chieftains.
In Uttar Pradesh, the largest state, the fight will be predominantly between the Bahujan Samaj party (BSP) led by Miss Mayawati and Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi party, with both the Congress and BJP marginalised and votes going not for programmes of development and progress but along the lines of caste or religion. While Mayawati is the new phenomenon, drawing her strength from the Dalits – the most backward and least influential of castes – the Sawajwadi party hopes to be backed by the mid-segment among the castes, the influential Yadavs and others, besides the Muslims.
Between them, they will decide whether computers should be banned or whether society will undergo further "re-engineering", with Mayawati's promise of bringing the economically poor upper castes under the most controversial of Indian welfare schemes – the positive discrimination programme called "reservations".
At the other end of India's map in Tamil Nadu, an emotionally supercharged state at the country's southernmost tip, there is another powerful chieftain who has manipulated governments seeking her support in India's age of ruling coalitions: the AIADMK leader, Miss J Jayalalitha.
With Tamil voters known to switch from one formation to the other in this absolutely bipolar state, the AIADMK is expected to trounce the rival DMK. Not surprisingly, the three key "fronts" in this election – the Congress-led UPA, the BJP-led NDA, and the "Third Front" managed by the Communists – are all eating out of her hand.
The third of a trio of strong regional woman politicians with strange similarities – all unmarried and known for their confrontational and rustic politics – is Mamata Banerjee, the Trinamul Congress chief. Famous for her sustained fight in Bengal against the Communists, and having once been a BJP ally, she shot to infamy recently for kicking out the Tata Nana car project from West Bengal – despite Bengal suffering from a lack of industry, investment and jobs. Tied with the Congress to bring down the Communists from their strongest bastion, Mamata can also choose to join the BJP, but not the Third Front.
Another leader on a comeback bid is the former governance reforms visionary, N Chandrababu Naidu, who heads the Andhra Pradesh-based regional party, the Telugu Desam. He has unleashed his extended family's film power and a slew of promises, including separate statehood for the Telangana region, free power for farmers (last time he opposed these two moves and lost), free colour TVs, direct cash subsidies for all the poor, cheap loans, free water, free education, free ... well, almost everything. But the birth of a new regional party, formed by the cinema idol Chiranjeevi may cut into his chances. Known for his ability to bring together contradictory forces and break deadlocks, he will be a key force, except that he cannot touch the Congress with a bargepole.
The last regional strongman – Sharad Pawar – is a key partner of the Congress from India's second largest state, the industrial and economically developed Maharashtra. He feels his time for the top job has come, given that he has relinquished his sideline of heading India's cricket board. While the Congress and BJP – the two primary parties – are expected to fare well and come close to power, they cannot hope to win an absolute majority without one of these regional chiefs, several of whom harbour prime ministerial ambitions.
Will it be an alliance led by the Congress or the BJP, or a new front altogether? These questions that will be debated for the best part of a month – until May 16, when the electronic voting machines are opened and the votes counted.