Opinion Why CM Bommai must take inspiration from his own state’s governance legacy, not take cues from UP

Just a year in office and with nearly one year to go for assembly elections, Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai seems to be searching for the way forward. A relatively late entrant to the BJP, this former Janata leader has, by all accounts, been under pressure to push the Hindutva agenda in government. The rhetoric of a section of the ruling party has been divisive and polarising. Now, the heinous murder of a BJP Yuva Morcha worker near Mangalore on Tuesday has turned the BJP cadre restive. Bommai has responded to this by offering to emulate Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath and crack down on “anti-national and communal elements”. But this rash offer of adopting the “Yogi model of government” is fraught – politically, legally and economically —for Karnataka. It may win Bommai some reprieve from the hardliners within the BJP, but it could hurt the state’s prospects in the days to come.

The “Yogi model” that Bommai seeks to invoke, to a large extent, has to do with an assertive majoritarianism and the weaponisation of the law to target the minority. Since the anti-CAA protests, it has come to light how sections of the UP administration have given the go-by to due process and attached or demolished properties belonging to the alleged protestors, many of them Muslims. Municipal laws on encroachment have been selectively used, and no hearing given to those targeted. It is true that Karnataka has been facing the problem of radicalisation of youth; organisations like the Popular Front of India, which wish to impose a militant and puritanical agenda among Muslims, especially on women, are a threat to communal peace. The recent hijab controversy revealed how much of a stifling influence the PFI can be on an aspirational community. These organisations need to be proceeded against, but this must be done without compromising due process for all. Bommai should know that Karnataka’s rise as an economic powerhouse and Bengaluru’s evolution as a high-tech hub has much to do with the enabling social environment nurtured by his predecessors. The state has been a pioneer in building grassroots democracy with its Panchayati Raj institutions, offering policies that combine welfare and social justice, using private/communitarian capital in developing educational institutions, promoting sunrise sectors such as IT and bio-tech. All this was possible because the state had extended periods of social peace.

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There is no reason why Bommai should abandon this legacy for politics and practice in a state that has a long distance to travel before catching up with Karnataka. The BJP in Karnataka has some soul-searching to do as its factions battle it out for the spoils of office and ideological gains. While they do so, the least the party leadership can do is to ring-fence governance from the inner-party pull and tug.