Hari Narayan Tiwari, now in his eighties, was in Gujarat’s Kathiawar prison during the Emergency. Then a Bharatiya Jana Sangh activist, Tiwari claims to have met now Prime Minister Narendra Modi after his release. Modi was then heading the Gujarat Lok Sangharsh Samiti — which aided underground Opposition leaders. He said he also spent some time working for former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who was external affairs minister from 1977 to 1979.

Tiwari, a resident of Jabera in Damoh Lok Sabha constituency, shakes his wrinkled hands when asked if he works for the “Sangh” any more. “Vishwas utth gaya hai (I have lost faith),” he said. “I only do farming now, not politics. I was surprised when Modi was made PM candidate. I had hopes in Atalji, and then Shivraj Chouhan, but what is the result of their regimes? The condition of people here is nothing to be proud of.”

It has been almost two decades since Tiwari engaged in any political work. He says he never received the Loktantra Senani Samman Nidhi pension of Rs 25,000 for Emergency detainees. The pension, introduced by Shivraj Chouhan in 2008, was put on hold by the new Congress government in January until beneficiaries are verified. Chouhan was chief minister for 13 of the 15 years of BJP rule in the state, which was won by the Congress in December last year.

The Congress holds four of the seven Assembly segments in Damoh — the southern edge of the Bundelkhand region, some 250km from Bhopal.

Tiwari shrugs when asked if he could be photographed at a tea stall on the highway near Singorgarh Fort — once the capital of the tribal kingdom of Garha. “If you find anyone happy with the government, then photograph them. Shivraj did very little. Kamal Nath is too slow,” he added.

One such youth — a Gond Thakur whose clan once ruled Garha — offered tea to Tiwari. He studied until Class VIII, and dropped out after that as elders said it was a waste of time to walk to the high school 4km away in Jabera.

“Whoever comes to power must bring some factory here. We used to raise one crop of rice and wheat each a year, but rains are no longer enough and there is no irrigation,” he said.

He makes ends meet by working at the tea stall and by hunting in the Veerangana Durgawati Wildlife Sanctuary. Partridge, and even deer meat, are in demand from travellers on the highway. The young Gond Thakur is an archer “from birth” and risks imprisonment every time he sneaks into the forest for a kill.

In Damoh town, Madan Thakur, a farmer, said “he was BJP unto death”.

In the same breath, he added: “We made Jayant Malaiya (former minister and BJP MLA from here since 1990) lose (the Damoh Assembly seat) as he did not do anything to develop the place like Indore, or even Jabalpur. The main issue for me is jobs being given to outsiders from UP and Bihar (which the Congress has brought a law to discourage).”

“But this time, we will vote for Modi who has brought Pakistan PM Imran Khan to his knees with the surgical strike and forced him to release Wing Commander Abhinandan. The candidate (MP) Prahlad Patel is immaterial,” he said.

Thakur’s mother is one of the beneficiaries of the Kamal Nath government’s farm loan waiver, which has covered 22 lakh farmers so far, and will extend to an estimated 28 lakh more farmers after the polls. He claims that she has Rs 1.31 lakh in unpaid loan from a cooperative bank, however the waiver has only been granted for Rs 13,000.

Dalit sharecropper Dhani Ram came to Kalera bus stop see off his nephew’s family who are leaving to work at construction sites in Delhi. Ram says he is happy with both Modi and Kamal Nath.

“Everyone says Modi is great and he is making India proud. Kamal Nath has increased the old age pension, and granted loan waivers. But we have not got the payment for our harvest that the government procured four months ago. A new government takes time to set things right, but the government school hardly has any teachers and we pay Rs 20,000 per year at a private school. Both the BJP and Congress make promises they can’t keep, but they can easily improve the condition of government schools,” he said.

Private school teacher Devendra Patel, from the landed Lodhi OBC community which former BJP chief minister Uma Bharti belongs to, earns Rs 7,000 a month in Nohta. He finds the Congress candidate, Pratap Lodhi, more polite than the BJP incumbent, Prahlad Patel.

“None of my family’s farm loans have been waived yet. No party is taking about the water crisis, which is the biggest problem. Modi is the tallest leader of the country because he attacked Pakistan, but we voted Congress in the Assembly polls. If the Congress, can’t solve our problems, then what option do we have besides voting for Modi again,” he said.

• Damoh votes on May 6