By Krittivas Mukherjee VARANASI, India (Reuters) - As the helicopter swooped down a cloudless sky, a tide of ''untouchables'' surged forward for a glimpse of their new champion -- a stout 53-year-old woman billed as India's potential prime...";

VARANASI, India, Apr 13 :  As the helicopter swooped down a cloudless sky, a tide of "untouchables" surged forward for a glimpse of their new champion -- a stout 53-year-old woman billed as India's potential prime minister.

The woman smiled and offered a windshield-wiper wave, sending the crowd into raptures. They sang songs in her praise and raised their hands in the air, as if in deference to a goddess who has descended from the sky.

This is Mayawati, a daughter of "Dalits" or people formerly known as "untouchables", whose inventive caste-based politics in this general election is the hope of change for millions born into the poverty and wretchedness of the lowest rungs of the Hindu social hierarchy.

"No one feels for you the way our party does," Mayawati told a weekend rally in this northern holy town of Hindu gurus.

Hop scotching India by helicopter ahead of a staggered general election beginning Thursday, Mayawati is seeking to replicate across the country her stunning landslide victory in local polls in Uttar Pradesh in 2007.
A key swing state, Uttar Pradesh is the single largest source of seats in parliament and Mayawati is positioning herself as a vital ally to whichever party may need her to govern. She could even bargain to be India's first Dalit prime minister.

"Mayawati should be doubling her seats this time in the state which will allow her to leverage better as a coalition leader," political commentator Anil Verma said. Her party won 19 parliamentary seats from Uttar Pradesh in 2004.

Analysts say such a government was unlikely to be stable or be able to bridge a yawning fiscal deficit and push financial reforms, including slashing subsidies and privatisation.

Critics say Mayawati and her Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) are siphoning off state funds to pay for her personal whims, from expensive houses, jewellery to bronze statues of herself.


AUTHORITARIAN
At the rally in Varanasi in support of her candidate -- a Muslim now in jail on murder charges -- her stage was cooled by four air-conditioners. Her supporters braved a baking sky.

One of nine children, Mayawati managed to study law and become a teacher through a government quota scheme for Dalits before being mentored by the BSP's founder.

Since her election win in 2007, she has inaugurated one of India's biggest highway projects, spent millions on parks and statues, and wielded what critics say is an authoritarian stick.

She has already faced probes over her personal wealth.

But Mayawati, affectionately called "Behenji", or respected sister, is an icon for most of India's 170 million lower-caste people she is trying to mobilise.

Yet Dalits alone are not enough to win Mayawati power.

Mayawati won the state election with an unlikely alliance of Dalits and the priestly Brahmins, the cream of the caste system. She is now trying to replicate that alliance in other states.


But corruption is the most serious criticism of Mayawati and her two years in power have spawned disillusionment among a section of the youth complaining of no jobs or opportunities.

The national parties -- the ruling Congress and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party -- have little presence in the state. Many Dalits think Mayawati is simply unstoppable now.

"There is little to come in the way of Behenji," said Mangat Ram, a Dalit farm hand.
For an interactive graphic on the Indian elections, 

Indian election rallies draw huge crowds, fiery speeches and a lot of promises to deliver a better future, but the star of the show is often the helicopter in which the key speaker arrives.

At a rally in the small town of Nuh, 78 kilometres (49 miles) south of New Delhi, several thousand low-caste Dalits, Muslims and the rural poor had been sitting on the ground for at least four hours, waiting in the baking heat.

When Mayawati Kumari, the "queen of the Dalits", finally came into land, they rushed to stand up and forced their way past security guards to watch her helicopter descend from the sky.

As it settled noisily on the flat, bare plain, its rotor blades blew clouds of gritty dust into the excited crowds and the canvas sun awnings flapped wildly in the breeze.

Mayawati, like all of India's prominent politicians, is on a hectic schedule, flying around the country from one rally to another, ahead of voting that starts on April 16.

Wherever the party leaders go, the format is much the same: a patch of open ground, a makeshift stage, sun shelter to protect the spectators -- and hours and hours of music, speeches and chanting to build up the atmosphere.

At Nuh, a poor farming area in the state of Haryana, the crowd had gathered since early morning, clogging the approaching roads with rickshaws, buses and carts decorated in the blue flags of Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

Men in simple white clothes filled much of the audience, while women in colourful saris cared for children in a reserved section off to one side.

"I am here to see Mayawati," said Sona, a 40-year-old Dalit woman. "I have seen her on television and she has promised that the lower castes will get more benefits and job opportunities."

Poor women in particular look to Mayawati, who has risen to be chief minister of Uttar Pradesh state after being born into a Dalit, or "untouchable", sub-caste of leatherworkers in 1956.

"She is like us and understands our problems. She knows how it is to be poor and we hope she will help us," said Somvati, an elderly female ragpicker suffering from cataracts.

Some spectators said transport to the rally was free and that they were there only out of curiosity and the chance of a day away from home, while others seemed certain that Mayawati could improve their lives.

"We are not paid to be here or given any free food," said Mosim Khan, 19, a truck driver from India's large and often poor Muslim minority.

"I will vote for the elephant (the BSP symbol), because Mayawati will bring us clean water, and sort out the railway line," he said.

As the waiting stretched into the heat of the day, local politicians gave lengthy warm-up performances attacking the incumbent Congress coalition and vowing that Mayawati would soon be prime minister.

Songs played on the loudspeaker sang "my queen, my sister, she is my life, she is my pride," and officials led chants of "she is new, she is determined, she is Mayawati".

Eventually she appeared on stage and delivered a 25-minute stump speech outlining her achievements as a chief minister and promising change for India's downtrodden masses.

Her rhetoric drew only an occasional splatter of applause, and soon the crowds were chatting among themselves despite party activists who tried to spark up further signs of enthusiasm.

After finishing her text, she left the stage quickly and returned to the helicopter.

Immediately the audience leapt back to life, pushing and shoving to get a good viewing position. The rotor blades revved into action and the queen of Dalits was borne up and away, out of the heat and the dust, and off to her next engagement.