Nawalgarh is a little town on the road between Sikar and Jhunjhunu in the Shekhawati region of north Rajasthan. A young man is manning the counter of a store that sells engine oil and lubricants. In the midst of a conversation on the election prospects in these parts, he suddenly asks, “Do you remember your schooldays?”

Without waiting for an answer, he says, “You know, in every classroom there is a student that others disdain. They don’t share their tiffin with him; they don’t exchange exam notes with him; they don’t involve him in their games. For all these years, India was like that student. The world treated us shabbily. But Narendra Modi has changed that. Now the world looks at India with respect.”

Pleased with his analogy, he adds with a flourish, “This election is not about candidate or party. It is about the nation. We are voting for Modi because he has done India proud.”

It is a claim that we hear over and over again. At a roadside dhaba in a village called Dadiya in the same region, the waiter wiping the table eavesdrops on a discussion on how Modi has taught Pakistan a lesson and adds his two bits to it. “You must have heard about Masood Azhar. Now even China has to bow to Modi.”

More than 200 kilometres away at a chai shop in a place called Kanota that is part of Dausa in eastern Rajasthan, Jagdeesh Meena says the Congress swept the district in the Assembly elections last December and he too had voted for the local Congress candidate.

With the Meenas, a powerful Scheduled Tribe community, inclined towards the Congress, Dausa is among the list of seats that the Congress is confident of winning.

But Jagdeesh Meena, surrounded by a large group of men belonging to different castes, says the Congress is mistaken. So is the BJP. “Iss baar party ki baat nahin hai, desh hit ki baat hai. Aur desh hit ke liye, Modi ko sab vote karenge (Parties don’t matter this election, the nation does. That’s why everyone is voting for Modi).”

That sentiment is repeated in village Shyamganga, which falls under the Alwar Lok Sabha seat. The Congress won Alwar in a by-election two years ago. It has now fielded the erstwhile royal Jitendra Singh, known for his proximity to Rahul Gandhi.

Kailash Nath Jangir, a local resident, admits that Jitendra is a better candidate but says this time the people are voting for Modi. Why? “He has done good work, people are happy with him. But the biggest reason is that he has made India proud.”

As we zigzag across the vast arid stretches of north and east Rajasthan, the irony is evident: Ashok Gehlot, the three-time chief minister of the state, may have started life as a magician but it is Narendra Modi who has cast a Pied Piper-like spell over the people again. And his flute has been the social media.

In addition to the Modi narrative that has dominated much of the traditional print and electronic media over the past five years, it is his “direct connect” via social media, we discover, that has carried his message far and deep, turning significant parts of the state (if not the country) into an echo chamber of his claims to greatness.

Far from being fatigued by Modi’s incessant propaganda that nothing worthwhile happened in the country for the last 70 years and that he alone cares for the people while other politicians hanker after power, a very large section repeats his words verbatim.

The few sceptics we come across are aware they belong to a minority. At a place called Reengus near Sikar, Subhash Chandra — who identifies himself as a Scheduled Caste — refuses to join the chorus in praise of Modi. When others extol the Balakot strikes, he wonders aloud why Pakistan returned our pilot if it faced so much destruction and humiliation.

Chandra’s friend Tejpal, a Jat, says: “(Air force pilot) Abhinandan (Varthaman) was returned because Pakistan is scared of Modi. Only Modi could have got him back.”

Chandra shakes his head sadly and says, “Sab log brainwash ho gaye, kya karen (Everyone has been brainwashed, what to do)?”

We witness a similar discussion among a larger group of people in a market in Dausa. The one naysayer is Alok Mittal, who works here but hails from Uttar Pradesh.

He defiantly states that he has already voted in Aligarh for the “gathbandhan” and tries to challenge the “Modi is the greatest” narrative. India has had many other good leaders in the past, he says, who did a lot for the country.

Gopal Jaimini butts in at that point. “Previous governments may have taken a lot of decisions but people remained ignorant of it. Modi has reached out to us, he talks to us, he tells us what the government is doing, what the country is achieving. Every child in India knows the name of Narendra Modi. Who knew Manmohan Singh?”

Warming up to his theme, Jaimini says that Modi does not need any intermediary to explain his policies and his vision to the people. “Almost everyone has a cellphone, and boys in the age group of 18 to 30 won’t be seen without a smart phone,” he says.

Dismissing the view that there is a rural-urban divide on the social media front, he says, “In fact, people have more time on their hands in the villages -– and they spend hours on Facebook, YouTube, and WhatsApp on their phones.”

That may be an exaggeration but even Congress leaders concede that the BJP has targeted first-time and second-time voters in a big way. We come across several of them.

Outside the NIMS hospital on the Delhi-Jaipur road, 25-year-old Manoj Kumar Sharma, who belongs to Churu, says his family has always voted Congress but there is a “craze” for Narendra Modi among all his friends. “On Facebook, only 10 out of 100 support the Congress.”

If Modi, through his direct outreach, is both larger-than-life and intimate to his followers, he has also succeeded in making Rahul Gandhi a figure of ridicule, especially among the young.

Even Manoj Sharma, who may vote Congress, hastens to add that he is doing so because of the local MLA and not Rahul Gandhi.

Every discussion on the elections ends up with someone or the other saying that Modi will win hands down because Rahul Gandhi is simply no alternative and because a “khichdi sarkar” will make the country weak once again.

When the doughty Alok Mittal in Dausa says that Rahul has improved a lot over the years, a man counters him promptly: “If you were going on a long journey, would you trust the car with a driver who was still learning?”

The BJP swept Rajasthan in 2014, winning all 25 Lok Sabha seats. Since then, the Congress has slowly clawed back. It did well in the panchayat elections, won a string of by-elections and crowned it with the Assembly election victory.

The party leaders insist that real bread-and-butter issues will trump the manufactured nationalist hype. And that the Congress’s traditional base of the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and the minorities, plus the new support from Gujjars and Jats, will ensure that the BJP loses half its seats. Given the Modi mania 2.0 gripping the state today, that seems an unlikely feat.