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One of the mysteries, however, is how Mrs. Gandhi, the compleat politician, so misjudged the national mood when she called the elections. She is known to have been worried last fall about the sterilization backlash and other bureaucratic tyrannies in North India. But in November Sanjay made a whirlwind tour of Uttar Pradesh and was greeted by the usual crowds—supplied, of course, by the local authorities. Similarly, when Sanjay and his elder brother Rajiv visited a community of resettled slumdwellers, they were given a tumultuous welcome—as ordered by party officials. Mrs. Gandhi, deprived of a free press and served by an ever narrowing circle of trusted advisers, apparently had come to believe her own propaganda. The election she was sure she would win became a referendum of her rule, and it backfired. In the end, an aroused electorate calmly rendered the only verdict it could on a ruler whose distance from her subjects, even for feudal India, had become intolerable.