Indian voters dissect Modi’s politics while traversing the country by train

ABOARD THE THIRUKKURAL EXPRESS, India (AP) — The 1,800-mile (2,900-kilometer) journey south from New Delhi to Kanyakumari is one of the longest train rides in India, passing through cities, villages, scrub forests and deep ravines.

The 22-car Thirukkural Express is a microcosm of India, carrying passengers from different castes and religions and with wide-ranging ambitions and grievances — from migrants crammed into sweltering no-frills cars to well-heeled families luxuriating in air-conditioned sleeper cabins, and everyone in between.

Passengers can also be divided by their politics, a topic that is top of mind with a consequential election underway. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is likely to win and reappoint Prime Minister Narendra Modi — the leader for the past decade — for another five years.

India’s economy has grown rapidly under Modi, but the strong-arm tactics he has deployed to push his Hindu-nationalist agenda has sharpened religious divisions in the country of 1.4 billion people — roughly 200 million of whom are Muslim — and raised fears of a slide from secular democracy toward religious autocracy.

The Associated Press recently made the 48-hour train journey to interview Indian voters about the election, whose results will be announced on June 4. Below are some highlights:

THE GENERAL CLASS

Many passengers who bought the cheapest tickets available are domestic migrants. Sitting on steel benches, standing in doorways, or lying on the floor, they traveled between the thriving capital and villages in the countryside, or to other cities, in search of work.

Pardeep Kumar, a bespectacled man who runs a food stall in New Delhi, said the ruling Modi government isn’t doing enough for the poor.

Like millions of Indians