"Hello sir, I am calling from a media house," says a young woman hunched over a phone in Lucknow. Nearly 70 others packed into the non-descript three-storey house in a quiet Lucknow suburb are making similar introductions. At the other end of the line are voters, or village-level influencers, who the callers hope to win over in support of their client, Akhilesh Yadav. Except they have been told by their team leaders not to introduce themselves as representatives of the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, who is hunting re-election.
