A season to try and understand the people’s pulse

In the 1998 Indian elections, Congress leader Sonia Gandhi made her debut election speech in Sriperumbudur, where her husband Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated seven years earlier. The crowd responded with slogans, but some were unsure of their meaning, with one person asking if they had said something wrong. Such encounters were common during the elections, with voters often showing strong emotional bonds to their chosen parties.