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Campaign for the Common ManUnderstanding Indian election politics.

By Miranda KennedyPosted Thursday, April 30, 2009, at 6:51 AM ET

Mayawati KumariDuring India's last general elections in 2004, I made the mistake of asking my New Delhi maid, Radha, who she was voting for. Her face creased into a line of dismay. I was always disappointing my proud, illiterate housecleaner with my ignorance about the way the world works.

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"Why would I bother? What difference does the Indian prime minister make to me?" she asked, squatting heavily on her haunches. "Will he give me good city land to build a shanty on? Will he give me a better job?" She pulled the bucket of soapy water violently toward her and dunked the floor cloth into its center. "Even the politicians from high castes and good families, even the ones who went to school, still they do nothing for us—not even their own caste people," she grumbled, slapping the wet cloth onto the floor.

On April 30, another group of India's 700 million registered voters will head to the polls in the third phase of a multistage, multiweek democratic challenge. It's a cynical cliché that casting your vote in India always means voting your caste; one that is all too often true. Many voters will unashamedly admit they make their choice based on a candidate's name (a sure sign of caste affiliation). Indian politicians most often pitch themselves to voters based on caste, community, or religion; it's easier—and wins them more votes—than talking about the issues.

Radha is a Brahmin, the highest caste in the Hindu social hierarchy. She regularly reminded me that it was bad fate and early widowhood that had forced her to mop my floors, cook my food, and wash my clothes by hand. Radha had resigned herself to a work life beneath her god-given status. But she refused to be categorized along with my other maid, Maneesh, a Dalit or "untouchable." I had hired Maneesh to do the tasks Radha said she would not tackle due to her high caste: collecting my garbage, cleaning my cat litter.

In every other realm of her life, Radha strives to live according to the Brahminical code. In return, she expects her fellow high-caste tribesmen to stand up for her interests. Tribal loyalty is an essential aspect of India's caste system, which for centuries governed everything from occupation to marriage.

Today, caste has loosened its grip on urban Indian life. It is now possible for the rural immigrants who power India's booming economy to show up in a city like Mumbai or New Delhi and escape their hereditary occupations. Although caste continues to cripple the lives of millions of Indians in the countryside, there are signs of change there, too.

One ambitious Dalit politician—instantly recognizable across India by a single name, Mayawati—has styled herself as a symbol of low-caste ascendancy. Mayawati rose to power by billing herself as a defender of the oppressed at a time when class and caste warfare was becoming a viable national political strategy. At her early rallies, she urged fellow Dalits to beat higher-caste people with their shoes. Her aggressive rhetoric, reputation for personal corruption, and penchant for extravagance—she has acquired a personal fortune of at least $12 million and famously celebrated her 52^nd birthday with a 52-kilogram (115-pound) cake, which she justified as a repudiation of her people's long history of bitter poverty—have made her a much-chronicled figure in the Indian media.

Mayawati's strategic brand of identity politics is sometimes called "social engineering." She used her "politics of the oppressed" to get elected, repeatedly, as chief minister of India's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh. Now Mayawati makes no secret of her ambition to become India's next prime minister.

There's nothing like a national election in India to underline the divisions between poor and rich, rural and urban. More than 70 percent of the population lives in the countryside, where rates of poverty are high, education levels are low, and caste always matters. It is a mistake to judge India by its cities or to expect its elections to be decided by the visible minority of upscale (and usually upper-caste) young Indians who wear Tommy Hilfiger jeans, drink Budweiser at TGI Friday's, and declare that caste is irrelevant in today's India.