At 9 AM, we got our first call from Khandoda, one of the 214 booths in Bawal, that our volunteer had been beaten while trying to protest the casting of fake votes. We rushed to the reported booth, located at a local government school, and found ourselves an idyllic rural image. A group of men were sitting in the lawns, chatting away, smoking their beedis, and playing cards. We tried to ask the policemen on duty about a volunteer being beaten up but they don’t recall anything amiss, besides some drunken man being taken away. We were assured that ‘sab shanti se chal raha hai aap chinta na karo’ [polling is very peaceful and everything is normal, don’t worry.]. After a few hushed enquires, we managed to trace our booth agent, who was in two minds about registering an FIR. He narrated to us that BJP workers were casting votes of families whom they knew were away. His anger at being slapped by the upper caste goons, was tempered by the recognition that his survival in the village depended upon the patronage of the dominant caste. By the time we recorded his interview for filing a complaint with the EC, we had received numerous similar calls. The message was clear: rigging was rampant. More worrying was the realization that it was accepted as par for the course, by both the villagers and the election officials on duty.