Assam’s youngest legislator shows how elections can be won even with truth, love and poetry

In the recent state elections, amidst their blinding dust and bustle, the high-pitched melodrama and posturing of election podiums, cynical engineering of venomous divisions, stinging speeches, dizzying stakes, thronging crowds mustered in defiance of every safety norm of the Covid-19 pandemic and the open vulgar play of big illegal money, one iridescent story stands out, with hope.

This story demonstrates that even with flaws in the Indian democracy, it is still possible for a young person from an intensely marginalised community to fight and decisively win elections with empty pockets, equipped only with idealism and the Constitution, where your only capital is the trust that earned from selfless service of one’s people. This is the story of Ashraful Hussain.

At 27 years, this tireless rights activist, journalist and poet is the youngest legislator elected to the 2021 Assam assembly. He contested the election on an All India United Democratic Front ticket. His constituency is Chenga, the achingly beautiful but ecologically intensely fragile and impoverished riverine islands of the Brahmaputra River. It is not unusual for some of the islands to get washed away every monsoon. He did not inherit the seat from his parents as is common with most youthful legislators in India. His…

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