RAJNANDGAON: He has been on the road for the past 33 days, campaigning tirelessly to ensure a hat-trick poll win, but all the dirt, grime and dust of Chhattisgarh hasn’t made Raman Singh look any less benign. He smiles warmly when asked about the prospects of him assuming a larger national role next year, but adds, “It is too early to talk about it.” The chief minister contends that his focus, at the moment, is his home turf where the rival Congress is battling to pin his arm onto the table in one of the most familiar combat sport in Indian politics: populism.In the run-up to the two-phased elections to the state assembly and in the wake of the Congress promising free rice and free electricity for poor families if it comes to power in the state, chief minister Singh told ET in an interview that “we are here to offer nutritional security to people, and not merely food security”. Singh, who became chief minister in 2003, fought the 2008 poll on the “food security” plank, weathering anti-incumbency and garnering 50 seats in the 90-member assembly. In the last poll, the Congress secured 38 and BSP two seats.The 61-year-old, known for his close ties with BJP’s PM candidate Narendra Modi , hopes that “salt, rice and chana (chick peas)” – which his government has been distributing among the poor at highly subsidised prices or for free – will offer him an edge in the face of the latest move by the Congress which made its pro-poor announcements in its manifesto. Chhattisgarh goes to polls on November 11 and 19.The chief minister says he has multiple achievements to flaunt, including the much-lauded public distribution system (PDS) – renowned economist Jean Dreze has praised the state government for making the PDS system highly effective. Singh, meanwhile, also reels out data on the “big leap” in the power sector although he acknowledges that there is a huge slide in demand, making it difficult for the state to sell its surplus power as various companies and states scale down projects amid sluggish growth.The logic behind parties denigrating good economics in favour of populist measures is quite understandable, says a senior state government official. “That is because we are a country that has never disappointed our populist leaders,” he notes. He asked not to be named because he isn’t authorised to speak to the media. On Monday, the Congress in Chattisgarh announced, besides free rice of 35 kg a month, and free power supply to peasants, Rs 2,000 as the per-quintal procurement price for paddy.Of course, "food populism" is especially a recipe for fast poll gains: The late TDP veteran NT Rama Rao, then an actor, laid a solid foundation for his party in Andhra Pradesh by distributing to the poor highly subsidised rice in the 1980s. Several others have followed in the footsteps of this late chief minister of AP, pulling in vote from BPL families. According to the Planning Commission's estimates, a person who spends Rs 27.2 in rural areas and Rs 33.3 in urban areas a day is defined as living below the poverty line. Close to 22% of Indians fall under the BPL category, according to the latest Planning Commission estimates in 2011-12.Hukum Chand Kothari, 71, is a textile trader with a lot of interest in the elections. “With the whole country obsessed with food security, putting the spotlight on nutritional poverty (which refers to dietary deficiencies among people) looks very impressive. It is not that the food security law doesn’t talk about it, but in politics these gestures make a lot of sense,” says Kothari, seated in his shop at Rajnandgaon, the sleepy town from where Raman Singh is seeking re-election to the state assembly in a keenly watched contest. Singh’s main opponent, Congress’s Alka Mudaliar, wife of former MLA Uday Mudaliar who was killed in the May 25 Maoist attack in Bastar, appears taciturn, yet local people such as Pradeep Jain expect Singh’s 32,000 victory margin in 2008 to decline this time around. “Congress hopes to ride a sympathy wave here. Though Alka may not win, she can offer a good fight,” Jain adds.However, Singh dismisses any such talk of him winning with a narrower margin. Sympathy may not always translate into votes, he says. His son Abhishek told ET that while “the chief minister” is busy campaigning in all other 89 constituencies, the BJP has taken it up as a “matter of prestige” and “is aggressively campaigning” to improve the victory margin in the Rajnandgaon assembly seat from 2008. Six seats of Rajnandgaon district will go to polls in the first phase along with 12 from the Bastar region.Singh also rules out any “anti-incumbency wave” against his government. “All that will be offset by the anti-incumbency wave against the Manmohan Singh government at the Centre,” he says.An internal survey by the BJP had earlier indicated that the party may lose many of the seats it had won last time in Naxalites-infested Bastar. A BJP functionary from the state told ET that even though his party may not be able to capture 11 of the 12 seats from Bastar like last time, it will still manage a decent tally and improve its performance in other regions of the state. The BJP had recently managed to bring into the party fold Kamalchand Bhanjdeo, the scion of the Bastar royal family.Meanwhile, Siddharth Tiwari, a Raipur-based law student who hails from Bhilai, says the middle classes and others, especially those who are just above the poverty line, are “frustrated about the side-effects of populist measures that drive up labour costs for skilled and unskilled workers in the region”. His argument is that once they receive all the sops, “BPL men and women” decide to work for “much fewer days” a month and also demand “unreasonably high” labour costs. “This is because they can afford not to work thanks to the government largesse,” he says. Many agriculture experts also argue that such steps will force farmers to quit paddy cultivation and switch to cash crops.The government official notes that however it is unlikely that such "frustrations" can affect the outcome of the poll. “After all, whom do the middle class choose then?” he asks.For his part, chief minister Singh says all such concerns over a middle class backlash are misplaced. "After all, we are seeking votes on development, development and development alone."