MINUTES out of Kurnool, you peel off National Highway 18 which runs like an unfrayed ribbon all the way to the Indian Ocean, and take the road to the prime ministerial boondocks. The road is excellent as roads in premier constituencies should be, but the countryside is sere. Thorn and scrub, and uncultivated tracts, and the bald pates of rocks thrusting through the ground. This land needs water, and by the time you reach the squalor of Nandyal town, you are convinced that if this constituency did not possess a prime minister, it could sorely do with one.