Can Bangalore survive Karnataka?

Subir Roy: Can Bangalore survive Karnataka?
Business Standard

The present turmoil in Karnataka has highlighted the poverty of its politics and raised concerns about the future of the state, which, through its capital Bangalore, has put new India on the global map. If the state remains mired in low politics, can it continue to sustain Bangalore, which has emerged as a successful cluster in which the entire country has a stake?

As these concerns have been debated, some commentators have got a few facts wrong. One is that the Congress has botched things up for itself because it is not a patch on the BJP in keeping coalition partners happy. Not so. The state’s politics has come unstuck after the recently concluded panchayat elections because the last assembly elections returned a fractured verdict and all the major political forces fought the panchayat elections singly so as to find out their individual mettle.

H D Deve Gowda’s Janata Dal (Secular) came a cropper. The “humble farmer”, who was almost spiteful of Bangalore, was rejected by fellow farmers! Gowda’s wrong technical move was to throw out from his party former deputy chief minister Siddaramaiah, who would pose a challenge to the supremacy of Gowda’s son H G Kumaraswamy. Siddaramaiah’s new party did surprisingly well, underlining his support among the backwards. He has emerged as a classical electoral partner for the Congress, which should always bolster a combination containing backwards and Muslims.

The low in Karnataka politics is highlighted by the way the less than two-year-old coalition has survived and is heading for its demise. Chief Minister Dharam Singh has led a hugely incompetent show, incapacitated in part by Deve Gowda, who barely let it function. When the panchayat results pointed to Siddaramaiah’s rise and the decline of the JD(S), Kumaraswamy and Gowda saw their party being sidelined soon, decided to pre-empt things and formed an alliance with the former untouchable BJP to remain in power. The simplest and best course for the Congress would be to sit in the opposition, allow the JD(S)-BJP combine to make a mess of the administration—they are capable of nothing else—and ride to sure victory in the next assembly elections in alliance with Siddaramaiah. The real problem with the Congress is that instead of doing this purposefully, it is stumbling towards it.

The incompetent and corrupt image of the present Karnataka government and the prospects of it being replaced by something even worse have highlighted the longer-term governance issue in the state. It is being asked, how can such a successful state have such appalling politics? The first answer to the poser is that exceptional Bangalore has tended to overshadow average Karnataka. The state comes seventh in the Planning Commission’s 2002 study of the main 15 states. It has half a dozen districts which are as backward as any in Bihar. Bangalore accounts for over half the state domestic product and a similar magnitude of its taxes and public spending. Take out Bangalore and Karnataka is pedestrian, if not worse.

Those who still see the state in better light than simply average point to its social cohesion and development, its past record of governance and its educational infrastructure. On these experts do give the state some credit. The social cohesion and development, the absence of caste or class tension, is attributed to Devaraj Urs, who implemented land reforms in the seventies with passion and laid the foundations for a somewhat equitable society without stark inequality, particularly in the countryside. Unfortunately, corruption got institutionalised during his regime.

The good governance record is attributed to several factors. One, the state inherited good governance from the princely state of Mysore, whose ruler was among the most enlightened. Two, other parts of the state were earlier parts of the Madras and Bombay presidency, which had created a durable framework for administration. Three, barring a few exceptions, the state has had a pretty decent bunch of chief ministers who have not used bureaucrats to make money and so didn’t pollute the administration. Again, with a few exceptions, the state has had a good list of exemplary chief secretaries. Hence, the politicisation of the bureaucracy has been much less than elsewhere in the country, says B K Bhattacharya, a former chief secretary.

The state’s economic development is also partially explained by the public-private partnership that it has known all along, says G Gurucharan, an IAS officer belonging to the Karnataka cadre. The private sector always played ancillary to the public sector in the state. It was not so big and so escaped the consequences of Indira Gandhi’s stifling of big business during the seventies. Hence, although not well-endowed with natural resources, the state has witnessed a fair degree of industrial growth. A similar public-private partnership also gave the state an excellent educational infrastructure—private colleges took root early in it—and enabled the subsequent IT revolution, which required large numbers of technically qualified people.

The current concern is that if bad politics continues for too long it will stifle good economics. Part of the problem comes from the excessive attention that the previous S M Krishna government paid to Bangalore. The rest of the state, which throws up most of the politicians, is not exactly forward-looking. The city has clearly outgrown itself and needs radical solutions that neither the techie crowd nor the present crop of politicians can provide by themselves and the two are not talking to each other. Thus, Karnataka’s present politics does not augur well for Bangalore.