A likeness of party leader Mayawati waves from the top of a mockup of the Red Fort, Delhi's oldest monument, at an election rally in Allahabad. (Rajesh Kumar Singh/Associated Press)

The late Canadian-born economist John Kenneth Galbraith once described India as "a functioning anarchy."

But there's nothing anarchic about the current general election here in the world's largest democracy. It is unfolding with surprising efficiency and even the possibility of a real upset as India's poor look to have found their champion.

Four of five days of voting have ended — the final day is Wednesday, May 13 — and three-quarters of the 714 million eligible voters have had their chance to go to the polls.

Turnout has been lower than usual in many areas — down 25 per cent in parts of insurgency-plagued Jammu and Kashmir and well under 50 per cent in the wealthy enclaves of Mumbai.

But one group that appears to be voting with real enthusiasm is the country's Dalit community, members of the lowest Hindu castes who were once known as untouchables.

The queen of the untouchables, Mayawati, who likes to go by the one name, is presented with a crown at an election stop in Allahabad, India, in May 2009. (Rajesh Kumar Singh/Associated Press)

A rising tide of Dalit and lower caste support has buoyed the political fortunes of a most unlikely leader, a 53-year-old unmarried woman with a penchant for plain-speaking and rough tactics, Kumari Mayawati, who is widely known only by her last name.

In fact, some are predicting her Bahujan Samaj party (the name translates roughly as Majority People's party) will emerge as the kingmaker in the next coalition government with Mayawati herself a leading candidate to become prime minister, replacing the Congress party's venerable Manmohan Singh, the architect of India's so-called economic miracle.

India's 'Iron Lady'

Known to her followers as "Behen-ji" or "respected sister" and to others as India's "Iron Lady," Mayawati's life is one of those amazing tales of rags to riches, with an Indian twist.

Her low-caste origins didn't prevent her from getting an education and becoming a teacher, before turning to full-time politics in 1984, notes her biographer, Delhi journalist Ajoy Bose.

But no mainstream forecaster could have predicted Mayawati's 20-year trajectory to fame, political power and, for some, questionable fortune, says Bose. According to many accounts, Mayawati has amassed millions through her control of donations to her and the party.

She vigorously denies that there is anything wrong in what she has done. But, according to Bose, Mayawati "has virtually reinvented the games that Indian politicians have traditionally played in pursuit of power."

India's election by the numbers Overall population: 1.2 billion Eligible voters: 714 million Polling stations: 828,804 Electronic voting machines used: 1.3 million Constituencies: 543 (plus two appointed MPs) Candidates in last election: 5,398 Budgeted Cost: $264 million CDN Source: Indian Election Commission, Government of India

These include "constant political and ideological oscillation that would have been ludicrous had they not delivered such spectacular results."

Those results included being elected chief minister (the equivalent of a Canadian premier) of India's most populous and politically important state, Uttar Pradesh, in four separate elections as well as amassing a steadily growing block of MPs in the central Parliament in New Delhi.

'Our turn'

In the run-up to the current election, Mayawati makes no secret of her desire for India's top political job. Asked in a rare television interview if anything could prevent her becoming prime minister, she said in her colourful Hindi: "A movement has begun. When the time comes, no one can stop [me]."

For her, acquiring power has meant changing party alliances frequently, while lashing out savagely against her perceived enemies. In Uttar Pradesh, opposing Mayawati can lead to losing your job or even jail, journalists have noted.

Yet neither her autocratic style nor the allegations of corruption that have dogged her tenure in Uttar Pradsh have held back her expanding political base at the lower end of Indian public life.

"Mayawati's Dalit supporters are unanimous that what attracts them is not what she is but the hope she holds out for the future," Bose writes.

Rahul Gandi is festooned with a garland by Congress party workers at an election rally in the eastern state of Jharkhand. The boyish looking 38-year-old is the latest political incarnation of the fabled Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that stretches back over 60 years. (Sasanka Sen/Associated Press)

With India's economy growing at one of the fastest rates in the world in recent years, those at the bottom clearly feel it is time for their share.

Nehru's heirs

The low-caste firebrand isn't the only charismatic and controversial figure in India's current election.

Also wading in more fully this time is Rahul Gandhi, the 38-year-old former investment banker who gave up a job in London in 2002 to enter politics — effectively the family business. This is his second election but the first in which he has really thrown himself into the ring, travelling the country and speaking almost everywhere he can.

Few doubt his Italian-born mother and party leader, Sonia Gandhi, intends that her son continue the Congress party dynasty that began with Rahul's great-grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of independent India from 1947 to 1963.

Economist Manmohan Singh is running for re-election as the Congress party's official candidate for prime minister. But of course that can change after the actual votes are counted on May 16 and the coalition jockeying begins.

At this point, Singh's opponent from the main opposition Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) is Lal Krishna Advani, 81, a respected political strategist who engineered his party's rise from just two parliamentary seats in the early 1990s to head the coalition government between 1998 and 2004.

On the far right of the political spectrum and another force to be reckoned with is Narendra Modi, chief minister of the western state of Gujarat. A fiery orator, Modi has earned grudging respect for his stewardship of Gujarat's economy after it was rocked by vicious anti-Muslim violence in 2002. But he's been denied a U.S. visitor's visa on numerous occasions because of unresolved allegations involving his role in those events.

Even further out on the fringes is the usual clutch of Bollywood movie stars, transgender activists, unrepentant Communists and strict followers of Mahatma Gandhi who want India to eschew industrialization and life in the cities for villages, homespun cotton clothes and vegetarianism.

In the past, elections in India have been marred by violent attacks by armed gangs and raids on polling stations known as "booth-capturing."

This time, however, the two million police, soldiers and election officials who move around the country monitoring the voting process seem to have kept anarchy at bay and given a patient, tenacious electorate its opportunity to vote.

Many analysts here have been saying there has been a distinct lack of emotive national issues in this campaign beyond general concerns about poverty and national security, brought on by the attack on Mumbai at the end of last year.

Galbraith's functioning anarchy may no longer apply, but for sheer variety and unpredictability, an Indian election is still one of the greatest shows on Earth.

It is also serious business. More than 600 million of the country's vast population live in varying degrees of poverty and they're increasingly impatient with the politics-as-usual approach that has brought the country to this point.

The country's aspiring leaders ignore this at their peril.