The BJP-led government has adopted a two-pronged strategy for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections scheduled to be held in Karnataka on April 23 and 30 respectively.
Like the Congress and other mainstream parties, it is fielding mostly those candidates who are either legislators or those with high-voltage influence with good prospects of winning what could be the most fiercely contested general elections this time around.
Accordingly, this year’s budget, announced on February 20, was unveiled with an eye on boosting BJP’s electoral fortunes. It was a populist budget meant to appease voters across a broad spectrum of the constituencies in urban and rural areas, the farming community, infrastructural, industrial, education and hospitality sectors as well as temples and mutts, religious minorities, artisans and the entertainment business.
Whether these inducements will work is a question that only the electorate will answer, since some new equations that will weigh on the voter’s mind this time is the launch of the Third Front led by former prime minister H.D.Deve Gowda.
The anti-incumbency factor against the BJP on the one hand and the unhappy experience with the Congress administration in the past could swing the vote away from these power points towards the Third Front. However, another imponderable during these forthcoming elections is a massive voter education campaign led by the media. The main thrust of this move is to get the people out and vote for change. To this end, a public awareness campaign has been launched through the print and electronic media providing a lowdown on the candidates in the electoral fray.
Against this background, the BJP is fielding six legislators for the parliamentary elections, including three who are outsiders. The probable candidates being mentioned are animal husbandry minister Revunaik Belamagi who will take on Congress stalwart Mallikarjun Kharge in Gulbarga, while health minister B. Sriramulu and Malleshwaram MLA C.N.Ashwathanarayan will be vying for Bellary and Bangalore North seats respectively.
Apart from their winning chances, the BJP also has to contend with tainted politicians in its own camp. Recently, the party landed itself in an embarrassing situation when Y. Sampangi , BJP MLA from Kolar Gold Fields, about 70 km from Bangalore, was caught red-handed while accepting a bribe of Rs.500,000 to close a criminal case. Confirming the bribery scandal, Karnataka Lok Ayukta Justice Santosh Hegde disclosed that of the hush money Sampangi had received, Rs 50,000 was in cash and the rest in self cheques.
In fact, rampant corruption involving politicians and government officials could impact the ruling party adversely, unless the voters choose to ignore it, as they did in some constituencies during the legislative assembly elections in May last year. According to the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), the Karnataka government received Rs. 23 crore on its Rs. 22,279 crore investment in companies and statutory corporations.
This amounted to no more than 0.10% return on such huge investment, states the CAG report, which points out that the state’s fiscal deficit surged by Rs.644 crore to reach Rs. 5,332 cr resulting from the growth in capital expenditure. The CAG also held the Cooperation Department responsible for granting reimbursement to inadmissible claims by distorting facts that led to excess reimbursement to the tune of Rs. 11.40 crore to farmers.
Karnataka has achieved the dubious distinction of being top among the four southern states, where its citizens living below the poverty line (BPL) have to pay bribe for getting access to 11 basic services. While 67 percent of the BPL households had to bribe their way in Karnataka to get basic services, it was much lower in Tamil Nadu at 59 percent. The actual payout at Rs.97.6 crore was the highest among the four southern states.
As a result of these factors, Karnataka’s annual rate of growth dropped to 5.5% from 11% last year, while public debt stood at 27% of the State GDP. Mindful of all these skeletons in its cupboard, the government’s electoral strategy is to woo the urban voters, some of whom had supported the Congress during the legislative assembly elections last May. In line with this strategy, of the Rs. 7,000 crore allocated for urban infrastructure, as much as Rs.3,000 crore has been earmarked for Bangalore. Similarly, as part of its campaign to ease the traffic bottleneck, a Rs.500-cr outlay has been set aside for the purchase of 1,000 buses to beef up the public transport network.
The opposition has been quick to pounce on this lop-sided spending that has seen the agricultural sector with a budget allocation of Rs.2,440 crore. Former Karnataka Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, too, underlined this point when he said the government was not doing enough to improve the lot of farmers and the downtrodden, when 66% of the population lives in rural areas. He has also blasted the government for its inability to check farmers’ suicide.
The former chief minister has also accused the BJP government of caste-wise allocation in view of the upcoming elections. This is seen in the Chief Minister’s allocation of Rs. 130 crore in the budget for temples and mutts. Economics professor S.T. Bagalkoti of Karnatak University also referred to the allocation to mutts and other religious organizations and called it a wrong precedent in a secular country.
Other provisions in the budget with political implications envisage the establishment of new universities for ayurveda, Sanskrit, vedic education in Bangalore, as well as for a new academy for music and fine arts in Davanagere. Similarly, to tap the vote bank of artisans from backward classes engaged in traditional arts and crafts, the government has announced loan facilities up to Rs. 5,000 and a subsidy Rs.5,000 per head. Such a measure will benefit one lakh artisans.
The government has also not lost sight of the fact that Dalits had played a significant role in the BJP’s ascent to power in May last year. And to mobilize the support of the minorities, including Christians, Sikhs and Buddhists, it has pitched in with a Rs. 10- crore grant for their institutions.
In incurring such a hefty expenditure, the BJP government is making use of New Delhi’s concession to states allowing them to raise their fiscal deficit target to 3.5% of their GDP for the financial year to cope with the economic slowdown. But the government is seeking political mileage out of it.
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