BELLARY, India, Sept 8 : am poor and think I will remain poor the rest of my life," says Govsiddapa, a labourer in a small village in southern India, reports AFP.

Caught in a trap of debt and diminishing returns, Govsiddapa and tens of millions like him have little faith in a political system that has largely failed to tackle the grassroots problems of chronic poverty in rural India.

Ironically. Govsiddapa and other voters in the southern backwater of Bellary have just spent several weeks in the political spotlight, as opposition leader Sonia Gandhi and her Hindu nationalist rival waged a high-profile electoral battle over the constituency.

Voting was held on Sunday,

but people in this backward rural area have heard too many broken promises from politicians to believe that the election result will bring any substantive benefits.

Govsiddapa, 48. earns less than 1.500 rupees (30 dollars) a month "If the monsoons are good" -- which they have not been for the past 10 years.

Forced to borrow from local loansharks, his prospects get bleaker by the month.

"I cannot pay my principle or my interest as the crop has been bad. I don't know how I will get out this trap.”

Five decades of democracy has brought about little change to the suffering of India's poor. .

More than 130 million Indians - twice the population of France^- have no .access. to

basic health facilities, while 230 million lack safe drinking water.

One third of the close to one billion people earns less than a dollar a day.

The villages of Bellary provide a classic example of the de.-, privation that is replicated across the country.

Around 75 per cent of the constituency's mainly lower-caste population make their living from agriculture, and 47 per cent are illiterate.

According to the state government, 44.5 per cent of the people In Bellary live below the poverty line, with an average per capita Income of 8,544 (200 dollars) a year.

Kesamma. a tea- shop owner, says she walks 10 km every day to fetch drinking water.