OUR CORRESPONDENT raises the curtain, prior to State elections, by portraying the socio-economic and political background of the State.
The State of Karnataka goes to three-phase polls in May. Karnataka has shown amusing poll patterns in the past inasmuch as it has perplexed the poll pundits. Voters in the state at least twice in the past have handed down varied mandates for Lok Sabha and the State Assembly even though they were held almost simultaneously.
A few characteristics of Karnataka set the state apart from other states in the vicinity. Firstly it symbolizes a microcosm of national politics. All three major players in the state are national parties, the Congress, the BJP and the Janata Dal Secular. Regional parties hardly ever had any appeal here. Parties such as the Kannada Chaluvaligaras or the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha have never won more than a couple of seats. Charisma of regional celluloid heroes too has failed to prove a glue for the regional forces. Several regions within the State have nurtured sub-regional sentiments. For instance, Kannada is spoken by only 65 per cent of the native population. People in the coastal districts are Tulu, Beary, Navayati and Konkani speakers. District of Coorg has Kodava language. Of the 13 per cent Muslim population, nine percentage point speaks Urdu. Districts bordering Tamil Nadu and Kerala have fair sprinkling of Tamil and Malayali speaking people. Consequently, the state stands apart from its other Dravidian cousins, i.e, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra where regional chauvinism has often been the bane for national political parties and owed itself to the linguistic homogeneity.
Karnataka has been a trendsetter in terms of bipolar polity too. Congress and some faction of Janata Dal have shared power alternatively with fairly stable governance since 1982 when Ramakrishna Hegde rode the crest of a popular anti-Congress wave for the first time. However, Hegde was supported by the BJP in his first term as the chief minister. He threw away the coalitional arrangement and went in for fresh polls in 1985, soon after Rajiv Gandhi won a landslide mandate in December 1984 Lok Sabha elections. The state electorate who had plumped for Congress only three months ago returned the then Hegde-led Janata Party to rule the State for next four years.
However, some contrast is noticeable. Most of the Janata parivar parties have ruled the state when either the Congress or the NDA was at the helms at the Centre. This being the pattern for more or less a quarter century, there is a general perception that the State has received a raw deal from the Centre. It remains to be seen if Karnataka electorate would be any different this time.
Similarly, the political parties in the State betray social characteristics that are totally antithetical of their central organization. The Congress in Karnataka has always been a bastion of Other Backward Classes (OBC) and castes. Intermediate castes such as Edigas, Bunts, Bantwals, Rajputs, together with religious minorities have played a major role in electing the Congress. This is in contrast with the Indo-Gangetic politics where OBCs had to jettison Congress after despairing of its pro-Upper caste leanings for nearly four decades. Congress’ grip over OBCs tightened after highly popular chief minister Devaraj Urs took the reservation to nearly 69 per cent (it was brought down to 49.5 per cent after Supreme Court fixed the upper limit in 1993). Congress has given four OBC chief ministers namely, Devaraj Urs, Veerappa Moily, Bangarappa and Dhararamsing.
The Janata Dal (or its former avatar Janata Party) while espousing the OBC issues at the Centre could be seen in opposite role in Karnataka. All their chief ministers hailed from Lingayath, Vokkaliga and Brahmin communities, albeit from the cadre of former socialists.
Karnataka has been known to be a progressive state in matters of definite legislation in empowerment of the underprivileged classes. The former princely family of Wodeyars themselves belong to Urs community and brought in reservation in Government jobs in the 1880s. In 1916, the Leslie Brown Commission recommended enhancement of reservation for the OBCs. Consequently, the Brahmin dewan of the State, Sir M. Visveswaraya resigned from the post in protest. Chief Minister Devaraj Urs brought in agrarian reforms (second most successful after West Bengal) and upped the reservation quota for the OBCs. Veerappa Moily introduced four per cent reservation for Muslims in 1994. Ramakrishna Hegde won wider appeal after he and his Rural Development Minister Abdul Nazeersab worked strenuously on providing drinking water, irrigation, primary health centres and roads in the rural areas of the State. Nazeersab was duly credited for his effort and came to be fondly known as ‘Neersab’ (Man of water) and the state’s Institute for Rural Development was named in Mysore after him. It is also widely acknowledged that while the Congress’ policies in the State have always been urban-centric, the rural development got a boost during Janata Party/Dal tenures. Even during the just ended Janata Dal reign under H. D. Kumaraswamy, the chief minister’s nocturnal stay at villages won him accolades. Quite contrastingly, most of the high profile projects like construction of majestic Vidhana Soudha (State Assembly and Secretariat in Bangalore), setting of Information Technology Park at Whitefield, State Technology Park and development of IT, BT and NT (Nanotechnology) industry and the NICE highway between Bangalore and Mysore came up during the Congress rule.
What however is most noticeable in the context of Karnataka is that former OBCs such as Lingayaths and Vokkaligas are today ruling the roost in Karnataka and have firmed their grip over every lever of power be it bureaucracy, media, politics, banks, trade, industry and academia. Constituting 16 and 12 per cent of population respectively, Lingayaths and Vokkaligas have benefited most due to the early reservation and have steadily ascended the scale of progress. They take away almost 50 per cent of the seat in the ministries, government jobs and universities besides being entrenched in farming. They have even marginalized the former elite Brahmins to the fringes. While OBC chief ministers (barring Devaraj Urs who ruled for almost eight years) had short tenures, CMs like Nijalingappa, Kadidal Manjappa, K. C. Reddy, Veerendra Patil, J. H. Patel, Devegowda (either Lingayaths or Vokkaligaras) had more stable and longer tenures. This is mainly due to the firm bulwark the two communities have built up as the substructure for political support.
It finally boils down to the fact that without transformation from political party to the powerful class, communities cannot merely subsist on vote base. They need to raise permanent power substructure to sustain the power occasionally delivered by the electorate. If indeed this could be understood, India could be a level playing field for all. Karnataka has shown the way forward in this regard.