Opinion A R Vasavi writes: At stake in Karnataka polls, the soul of a state

Scrapping the state planning board to rename it the State Institute for Transformation of Karnataka was to second the formation of the NITI (National Institute for Transformation of India) Aayog; promoting Hindi in public fora was a signal of the arrival of the state’s RSS-BJP troupe into the national RSS-BJP fold. The state government brought in legislation along the lines of the now revoked farm laws of the Centre. Pro-industry amendments have been made to the Land Reform Act and the state has been the first to endorse and implement the New Education Policy. Despite contestations, anti-religious conversion and protection of cow Acts have been promulgated. In the domains of economic planning, the interests of the state have been sacrificed to subscribe to the revised formulae of centre-state budget allocation and despite the fact that the average revenue of the state is higher than the national average, the state has been steadily losing its central allocation funds. As one financial expert has noted, Karnataka’s once efficient fiscal management is now on a downturn and the BJP’s extravagant expenditure on numerous statues, religious parks, caste corporations and temple construction will only make a larger hole in its coffers. A culture of impunity has encouraged legislators and RSS supporters to mouth threats, violence and vulgarity against both individuals and communities.

As the battle for votes intensifies, the Congress and JD(S) are now in competition with the BJP to make promises of a bounty of goods, services and money. From cash payments to farmers, students, and housewives, to free English education and payment for daughters’ marriages, voters are being showered with promises of a plenitude. Contenders in the three main parties represent big money and, as the records of the previous legislators showed, crorepatis out-number those whose annual income is less than a crore. While an anti-incumbency wave is anticipated due to the failure to address a range of key issues such as that of rampant corruption and maladministration, the ability of the BJP to deploy media, money and muscle power cannot be ruled out. The fact that new players such as the AAP, Karnataka Rashtra Samiti, and CPI-ML, apart from CPM, will field contestants is not assurance that they will make a dent in the “Modi mania” that continues to have currency.

That this battle for Karnataka will have other non-political players and voices which may be decisive in the final run is evident in the small but significant push-back of leading intellectuals and civil society groups. Leading litterateur Devanoora Mahadeva defied the ban on beef by openly purchasing it and his booklet on the RSS sold one lakh copies within the first month of its publication. Overcoming their differences in political ideology and strategies, several civil society organisations have forged a new common platform with which to halt the return to power of the BJP. Some Dalit writers and activists have distanced themselves from the call by the Republican Party of India that has endorsed the BJP. They have called for recognising the need for Dalits to assert their independent identity, despite the social engineering that focuses on new quotas for castes.

Even as much of the mainstream media, both print and television, in Kannada have become mouthpieces of the BJP, a number of new and innovative media outlets, especially online ones, are spearheading calls for a return to the Karnataka of the poet Kuvempu’s imagination — a land of peace and harmony. Shifting Karnataka’s trajectory from one of broad-based welfare of the most disadvantaged (which Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan had initiated by distributing land to the then untouchables in the Mysuru region) to that of “ill-fare” in which accumulation by a few, deprivation for a majority, and distortions of history, identity and social relations have become key will mean that this battle for Karnataka will be as historic and significant as the Battle of 1799.

The writer is a social anthropologist, based in Karnataka