Despite its fair share of existential neuroses, Karnataka is by nature a chilled out, benevolent state. A placidity rules on the surface that, perhaps, comes from the fact that quarrels — or what a Delhiite would call ‘taking panga’ on a routine basis — is not the underlying theme song of life. Rarely does one hear of ‘road rage’, though Bengaluru seems a synonym for a perpetual and ceaseless traffic snarl. In the NCR, you can thank your stars if you get home without one small panga or the other, either on the road or at the parking, or elsewhere. Unprintable expletives are a way of life, you exchange them as greetings, in mirth and in martial tones. Karnataka, that way, can be a calming experience.
There’s something like a permanent, let-you-be armistice in the air. Yes, don’t pour too much of your Hindi over this exalted zone that believes in getting its ‘thindi’ right! That’s breakfast, of the idli-vada-kharabath genre, with steaming kaapi to follow. Or donne biriyani. It’s really difficult to get them wrong, with the still surviving string of traditional eateries serving hot melt-in-mouth variety, almost in an assembly line.
Not that Bengaluru never gets hot under the collar about things going wrong. And there’s no dearth of them — lakes drying up, the garbage mafia surreptitiously converting them into landfills after nightfall, a looming water crisis, the traffic, a weather that’s getting warmer. But they don’t eat, drink and breathe politics round the clock. A bunch of MLAs rebelled, went AWOL. A busybody politician/minister of the then government hit national TV standing outside their Mumbai hotel, rain-soaked, lacing his theatre with coffee and momos, but people back here seemed little perturbed. Nor were they overtly bothered about B S Yediyurappa’s sleepless night in the Vidhana Soudha.
The rest of India gawked, breathless anchors spent hours pontificating in their little studios, but people here seemed neither amused nor angry. The political class is expected to be ‘like that only’. Earlier, a Lok Sabha election seemed confined to Mandya, where former actress Sumalatha single-handedly took on the Gowdas. The Gowdas are a bit like the Yadavs of UP, just about everybody in the family contests elections. The family enterprise didn’t go down well, so they were vetoed, that’s all. No frothing at the mouth. Even those online warriors — middle-class minders of political morality — dutifully went off for their weekend holidays when the time to vote came.
And things aren’t always left to the ‘sarkar’ to fix. More often than not, citizens groups, corporate honchos and college kids throw themselves at the task. To create pedestrian walkways, identify bad traffic spots, train corporators, take healthcare to the hinterland, rebuild dilapidated government schools. The likes of Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and her architect friend Swathi Ramanathan get hands on. It’s DIY governance. Little wonder there are over half-a-dozen stories of lakes being revived. If the land mafia strikes back, the same citizens group plays sentinel.
That’s a big statement on politics, of course. It exists almost in a silo, having abdicated its public duties. There’s a new government without a cabinet. A CM takes solo cabinet meetings, all by himself, proposing, disposing — BSY has had three-four of them, while the Delhi Durbar nods indulgently at this state running on auto pilot. A constitutional crisis was averted with the last-minute passing of the finance bill, wasn’t it? What else? Er...the floods? Half the state is under water. Reparation and rehabilitation would require some serious handholding from New Delhi. Meanwhile, citizens have stepped in here too, steering relief. The least the government can now do is organise the mammoth funds needed to rebuild roads and bridges, and compensate farmers for the huge crop loss. And do that in such a manner that bridges don’t collapse and the roads don’t cave in the next monsoon. It doesn’t behove a government, after all, to be too chilled out.
Santwana Bhattacharya
Resident Editor, Karnataka
santwana@newindianexpress.com