Karnataka is an orphaned state now. Well, the telephone lines, mobile and static, do work. Children go to schools, the colleges are open. So are the shops, malls and cafes. No activist group will write protest letters to the PM on behalf of Karnataka as a state in a limbo. There is no Twitter war on it. There’s nothing that’s really very wrong. But for a kind of utter abandonment. As if it has dropped off the map of India’s public consciousness. The only time the Centre’s presence is felt is when the agencies — IT, CBI and ED — come calling. Swachh Bharat doesn’t reach here, crossing over from the plogged beaches of Mamallapuram. Garbage lies strewn around its cities as if somehow ordained. Residents of at least two colonies in the state capital are scooting, because the stench has become unbearable. Does this have a parallel anywhere in India?
It happens in the state, still a generator of employment, despite the downturn elsewhere. But try taking a cab to Electronic City. The potholes literally kill. A young, harassed MP came to TNIE voluntarily to give an interview on dysfunctional local bodies! He was getting hundreds of calls from hospitals unable to ply ambulances. Metro work proceeds at a crawl, making road navigation as iffy as the last mile of Chandrayaan. No feeder service, no parking lots, and occasional collapsing false ceilings. The airport is among India’s best, certainly better than Ahmedabad’s. But do advise visitors to restrict their sight-seeing to the airport lounge and not venture beyond.
National abandonment does not lie in these small matters, though. Or the fact that a mayor was chosen just because he’s a Jain and that may please the big boss in Delhi…. Amit Shah of course has his plate full: elections to be won, an NRC to be prepared. Where’s the time to bother about a southern mayor? He hardly had the mental space to spare to release funds for 22 flood-hit districts. Finally, `1,200 crore was released under NDRF, as against a legitimate demand for `3,800 crore. That too after MLAs threatened to turn rogue, and the CM was cornered by his own ministers in a Cabinet meeting and got gheraoed in a flood-hit village. This is not even counting the other extreme, 49 drought-hit talukas. But hey, the PM has foreign policy to think about.
This is when there’s no political disconnect. The BJP is here and in New Delhi. Nor does Karnataka lack heft in the party structure. BJP general secretary (organisation) B L Santosh is from here. He does not have to win elections (at least not yet) like, say, the late Ananth Kumar to swing central funds and projects. But a presence among core decision-makers evidently means nothing. Talk is that both Kumar, when he was alive, and Santosh now, have had an uneasy, competitive relationship with Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa, but the latter never had to fend for himself the way he is being made to do at this juncture. The high command is probably trying to make a generational shift by projecting an urbane face like C N Aswath Narayan and the not-above-controversy Laxman Savadi from the same Ganiga Lingayat community as Yeddiyuruppa. The flux shows.
The Congress needs its perfunctory mention in the list of honours. It was once synonymous with Karnataka politics (though the first really non-Congress prime minister of this country, Deve Gowda, rose from its soil). The state underwrote its revival twice, but is all but forgotten.
Siddaramaiah gets little attention. Rahul Gandhi’s hibernation gets broken in poll-bound Maharashtra, Priyanka Gandhi is busy in her losing game in UP. Sonia, it seems, knows she does not need to come to Bellary again to win an election. A maverick showman who helped script a controversial Rajya Sabha win (and later cobbled together a coalition government) is cooling his heels in Tihar. Mallikarjun Kharge is busy winning, some would say losing, the Maharashtra elections for the party. PCC chief Dinesh Gundu Rao is seen as a ‘lightweight’. A Supreme Court verdict is awaited, meanwhile, to remind the nation of Karnataka.
santwana Bhattacharya
Resident Editor, Karnataka
santwana@newindianexpress.com