Going,going,gone

Two and a half months after he was forced to resign,the former Karnataka chief minister,B.S. Yeddyurappa has finally slumped and surrendered to the Lokayukta special court that had indicted him in land de-notification scams. Earlier,he had been implicated in the illegal mining scam that the former Lokayukta,Santosh Hegde,dedicatedly brought to light. Yeddyurappas arrest is a first for Karnataka politics even though he swapped his prison cell for a hospital,within hours. It can only be hoped that this unprecedented action is followed by a deep cleansing of Karnatakas politics and business.

Yeddyurappa,after all,is only a symptom of the problem in the states politics,distorted and degraded by money. The famous Operation Lotus,where Yeddyurappa managed to save his government by a hairsbreadth,was managed with open inducements to legislators. His obligations to the mining barons,the Reddy brothers,had also become unmanageable. In fact,Yeddyurappas companions in prison will include Janardhana Reddy,along with other ministers of his own former cabinet. And this is not just a BJP problem Yeddyurappas chief adversary,H.D. Kumaraswamy of the JD S,is mired in his own alleged misdeeds,a housing society case and a mining licence case. Apart from the underlying issue collusion between money and political influence Karnatakas public culture has been corroded by rampant disregard for the law,especially in land and real estate. Its recently appointed Lokayukta and deputy Lokayukta were compelled to quit,after they were also found to have tweaked the rules. That goes to the heart of all that is wrong with the state today and if Karnataka is to change,the action against Yeddyurappa must begin the end of that accommodation with corruption.

Meanwhile,at the larger level,this has taken the wheels off L.K. Advanis rath yatra. The BJP has been dealt this blow in Karnataka,its hard-won trophy in the south,just as Advani takes to the streets protesting corruption. This is a reminder of the complexity and embeddedness of corruption,and how merely sounding off is not a solution. Even if it was intended only as a piece of showbiz,Yeddyurappas arrest suddenly makes the rath yatras rhetoric sound that much more insincere. The yatra will struggle to assimilate this news and still manage to make its point.