© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
In an election in which no issue seems to straddle the different regions, no factor flattens the state’s several diversities, anti-incumbency also varies and fluctuates. But you can sense its presence in Karnataka. Voting exactly a week away, for the incumbent BJP, which is making the claim and promise of “double-engine sarkar” the central motif of its pursuit of the elusive “poorna bahumat”, that’s not good news.
Anti-incumbency, mainly centring on price rise and corruption, and encompassing farmers’ vulnerabilities, concerns on education and jobs, is a loud and assertive clamour in South Karnataka’s districts of Mandya, Tumakuru and Mysore. This is caste-dominated Vokkaliga territory where the JD(S) is strong, the battle-lines are drawn with the Congress — and the BJP is struggling to make inroads.
It’s a much more erratic refrain in the coastal districts of Udupi, Dakshina Kannada and Uttara Kannada, where the BJP has carved a stronghold over decades on the back of serial Hindutva mobilisations. It is muted in north Karnataka, in Hubli-Dharwad, where caste raises its head again, and the BJP has the advantage because of a traditional base among the dominant Lingayats.
But across these regions, in a state where poverty is not as sharply etched on the ground, legacies of development works and progressive policies go back to the princely states, and where rival Congress regimes, long ago under Devaraj Urs but also most recently under Siddaramaiah, are associated with a slew of successful welfare schemes, the BJP’s “double engine” boast falters.
It is primarily seen to be let down at the Karnataka end, by a government that has seen two Chief Ministers, three Deputy Chief Ministers, the exit from centrestage of BS Yediyurappa, the man who built the Karnataka BJP, and that has fumbled through the Covid crisis and been beset by scams, all in the span of four years.
Of course, this weak link for the BJP, many will point out, can also be seen as a fallout of the BJP’s own larger script — its project to remake the Karnataka BJP in the mould of the central Modi-Shah party.
Whatever the reasons, the Basavaraj Bommai government is an underwhelming presence across regions, even among BJP supporters. And Narendra Modi acts as a force multiplier for the BJP mostly where the Hindutva appeal is already strong — in other areas, he becomes part of a split ticket: Modi at the Centre, Congress or JD(S) in the state.
In other words, if for the BJP in Karnataka, the challenge is to tame anti-incumbency against its state government by the more overarching factors of Hindutva and Modi, Congress prospects depend on just how much that anti-incumbency rises, despite it all, to the surface.
In Yediyuru village, Tumakuru district, in a region in which the BJP’s Hindutva campaign featuring Tipu Sultan typically hit local caste disbelief — the Vokkaliga matha of Adichunchanagiri here put out a statement against the party’s attempt to pit two purported Vokkaliga warriors against Tipu in a recast story — Kumar, who runs a small business, says: “Karnataka is a farmer-centric state but the BJP looks after contractors. They bring in people from other states who bring down wages and cause job losses for the locals even as the cost of living increases.”
Ramu, who works as a flower decorator for marriage functions, says: “LPG cylinder prices have climbed. People used to cook in earthen pots on firewood earlier, now they are stuck in between”.
The rising price of LPG, from Rs 400-600 to Rs 1,200-1,400 and the plunging price of coconut, from about Rs 18,000 a ton to Rs 8,000, figure most often in conversations here.
Kumar cites the infamous “40 per cent commission” charge against the BJP government, first made in a letter written by the Contractors’ Association to the Prime Minister. “E-tendering is rigged, if earlier the commission was 10 per cent, it is now 40 per cent. The corruption shows up in the poor quality of roads”, he says.
Across the state, in Hubli, Jagadish Shettar, former BJP chief minister and six-term MLA who crossed over to the Congress on election-eve, lends credence to corruption concerns: “In KIMS medical college, Hubli, 30 seats of doctors are lying vacant for the last year, with no recruitment even after interviews. In the medical college in Haveri, the chief minister’s own district, 76 seats have been vacant over the last eight months or so, after interviews. Files move, no one is appointed, and patients suffer.”
In Krishnarajapete, Mandya district, Janaki HT, retired headmistress of a government school, draws a comparison: “The KRS dam built by the then Mysore ruler Krishna Raja Wodeyar in the 1920s is still intact, while the national highway inaugurated by Modi was waterlogged after a week of its inauguration.”
But anger against the BJP seems less palpable as you cross from rural Mandya into Mysore city. Here, especially among the young, many voters make a distinction between the Centre and the state — Modi at the Centre, while at state level, the choice is between Congress and JD(S), or simply the local candidate.
In GSSS College, Mysore, the state’s first girls-only engineering college, Ramita says: “Only Modi ji is a good leader, he has done a great job with Swachch Bharat and during Covid. But there is no good leader in Karnataka BJP. My family supports JD(S), so in the state I might support it too.”
And Akshata says: “At state level, all three parties are not doing anything to improve things, I will look at the candidate, not party.” It is Modi at the Centre for Akshata too, because “he has advanced the country’s defence”. Says Deepika BN: “He makes us feel we are in safe hands. He is making the rupee strong in other countries.”
Expressions of support for Modi are accompanied by the keywords “safety”, “international”, “military”, but the approval appears to stop well short of the state BJP. At the city’s popular pub Bopy’s, Keerti, who works as a data processing officer in a college, underlines the BJP’s predicament in this region: “It tells us what it does at the Centre, but what about Karnataka? We are seeing growth at the Centre, not in the state.”
Not long after you cross Mysore district, however, as you move from South Karnataka to the coastal belt that begins beyond the Western Ghats, it is as if the road that steadily becomes more undulating also arrives at a changed political landscape.
In the coastal areas that have a long history of successful Hindutva mobilisations around hijab, halal, “love jihad”, you are more likely to hear the defensive counter to allegations against the BJP: “All governments are equally corrupt”, or the “Congress was more corrupt”. And: “Aren’t prices rising everywhere, internationally?”
Here, support for the BJP regardless of government or candidate, bridges the distance between Modi and central schemes that are spoken of approvingly, and the lustreless state government.
At Sullia, Anand, who works in a Car Care Centre, says: “If BJP returns to power, the state government will act on the orders of Modi… Like in UP, where they hunted down killers and goondas (a reference to the UP police encounters). Karnataka should become like UP”.
But in Byndoor town in Udupi, the district where the hijab row flared two years ago, a group of young women, first-time voters, say: “The BJP works only on election-eve… there is no bus facility to our college, we walk a long distance everyday”. On the hijab controversy, Tejaswini says: “It is their culture, their choice. This should not become an issue, Muslim girls also need to study.”
In Hubli, in north Karnataka, also a BJP bastion because of its traditional hold on the dominant caste (Lingayats) more than Hindutva, Ashok S Shettar, vice chancellor of KLE Technological University, points to this election campaign’s unaddressed issue: “The sidelining of Yediyurappa and the exit of Jagadish Shettar is making all the headlines these days. But the bigger problem is that Hubli, the state’s second largest city, is fighting to grow — and struggling for water. Every day, a box in the newspaper tells you which area of the city will be provided water that day. Then you store water for as long as 10 days, when your area’s turn will come again”.
