A devadasi and an HIV/AIDS patient are in the fray in Gulbarga. Their candidature is a sign of the failed government machinery in the district, which is among the most backward in Karnataka but is politically important as 13 assembly seats are up for grabs. The two candidates decided to run for elections after their repeated requests for help from societal oppression came to nothing.Basamma Alukunte, 50, the Independent candidate from Gulbarga North, is among the 5,000-odd devadasis in the district. Alukunte lives in Dubai Colony with 300 other devadasis. “My parents pledged me to a goddess, Margamma, 40 years ago. I born after 12 years of their wedding and this was their way of expressing gratitude to the deity,” she explained. Pushed into the devadasi form of life when 0she was barely 10, Alukunte has lived with prejudices all her life. Alukunte, who is also the Karnataka state president of the ‘Destitutes, Widows And Devadasis Organisation’, has now decided that people like her need a political voice and launched her outfit, the Kannada Sainya. She gave up eating rice 12 years ago in protest against the government’s attitude to devadasis. “Most of us have to take to begging as we don’t get jobs anywhere. People believe we are prostitutes and turn us away or assault us,” she said. Alukunte says Karnataka should learn from Maharashtra’s action plan for devadasis. “They have an excellent rehabilitation programme for devadasis, who are given 25 kg of rice a month along with a Rs-500 stipend. The education of their children is taken care of too. In Karnataka, such schemes exist and packages have been announced, but no one has bothered to implement them,” said Somnath Katimanni, who is the Gulbarga president of the Kannada Sainya.Alukunte runs her campaign on a shoestring budget. “We depend on donations from people. But it’s difficult. Most people believe we are trying to cheat them and drive us away,” Alukunte said.Alukunte’s opponent is Jagannath, an HIV/AIDS patient, who says the government’s poor healthcare delivery system had forced him to enter the “dirty” field of politics. “We don’t expect to win against the bigger parties but want to use the elections to spread the message of HIV/AIDS and poor governance,” Jagannath said. Another HIV/AIDS patient, Mahanta, is in the fray in Shahpur constituency, some 40 km from Gulbarga.According to Jagannath, Gulbarga district has the highest incidence of HIV/AIDS after Raichur in Karnataka. Despite the rehabilitation packages, 10 AIDS patients die in Gulbarga city every month. Jagannath said, “The counseling for AIDS patients is such that most AIDS patients believe the medicine given to them is to hasten their death,” he said.Jagannath has with him 30 other HIV/AIDS patients from in and around the city and is working with funds from a few NGOs. “We are not going to canvass till Tuesday. We have just enough money for petrol and vehicles only for two days,” he said.
