In India hinterland, Dalits pin economic hopes on gods

By Alistair Scrutton

DAUD NAGAR, India (Reuters) - An hour's drive from the palatial headquarters of India's "untouchables" leader, her talk of eight-lane highways and birthday gifts for the poor had yet to filter to villagers pinning their hopes more on rain gods.

The villagers, from the same "untouchable" or Dalit caste as Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati, stood by their ramshackle mud huts and pointed to broken water pumps.

"We've four hand pumps and none are working. We've made a written complaint but no one listens to us," said Radhey Lal, a 45-year-old leader of Daud Nagar village on the outskirts of Lucknow, the state capital.

"We've no irrigation facilities. It's all in the hands of the rain god."

Lal, like many in this mainly Dalit village of 1,800 people, had high hopes for Mayawati -- known by just one name -- after she won an outright victory in the state last May to become chief minister, equivalent to a state governor in the United States.

But frustration in villages like Daud Nagar, even after only eight months of one of their own caste members in office, shows the economic challenges facing this northern part of India, where a national boom is making little headway in a Dalit hinterland.

Mayawati is now one of India's most well-known politicians and heads a state of 170 million people that would be the world's sixth biggest nation. She is now talked about as a future prime minister and coalition force in the 2009 general election.

Which is why she is being closely watched to see if she can harness an alliance of India's poorest, like Dalits, to offer national economic alternatives to India's two mainstream parties, the ruling Congress and the Hindu-nationalist and pro-market Bhartiya Janata Party.