Karnataka cleft: JD (S)-BJP break-up imminent

The opportunistic secular-Rightwing honeymoon in the state is as good as over, with Janata Dal (Secular) chief H D Deve Gowda son, Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy, planning on refusing to hand over tenure, when his 20 months are done, to alliance partner BJP. Divorce campaigning has begun in ‘right’ earnest.

By Shahid Faridi

It's that most dreaded of political relationships: a divorce right at the end of honeymoon. The Janata Dal (Secular), headed by former prime minister H D Deve Gowda, has decided to do a Mayawati on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP): give it the royal ditch.

Party insiders reveal that H D Kumaraswamy, who is Deve Gowda's son, will not hand over the chief ministership to the BJP at the end of his 20 months in the chair. Instead, he will seek dissolution of the House and, consequently, fresh elections. Insiders, in fact, say that this could happen anytime now—that Kumaraswamy might not wait the full 20 months. There is a possibility that the elections in the state might coincide with the elections in Uttar Pradesh.

It's not the first time for the BJP. Following a fractured verdict, the Bahujan Samaj Party that Mayawati led and the BJP had come together to form a coalition government in Uttar Pradesh. With the understanding was that each would head the state government for half its tenure, Mayawati assumed the chief ministership first. When the time came to hand over the post to the BJP, she balked, dug in her heels, and snapped the alliance.

The JD (S), which has retained its “secular” suffix to its name, has been the subject of much ridicule for having joined hands with the BJP, which is raucously Rightwing. The Left, the centrist Congress, and even some of its own senior party leaders have called its decision to ally with the BJP as opportunistic. The Congress asked the party to drop the “secular” from its name. Senior JD (S) leaders such as Surendra Mohan and Veerendra Kumar walked out, accusing Deve Gowda of standing the party's ideology on its head just to make his son chief minister.

Given that Deve Gowda's party's electoral fortunes depend heavily on the 12 per cent Muslim votes in the state, he has so far managed to balance on the tightrope. But with another senior party leader, Siddaramiah, the most significant leader of the backward Kuruba caste that constitutes a sizeable eight per cent votes in the state, having walked out of the party and joined the Congress, Deve Gowda could be facing a downtime. Siddaramiah has since won an Assembly byelection on a Congress ticket, in spite of Deve Gowda's best attempts to nail him.

Deve Gowda had been on slippery ground even before allying with the BJP. Now, he faces the lugubrious fate that befell Chimanbhai Patel in Gujarat, who had formed his state government with the BJP's help. But the BJP eventually swallowed the entire Janata Dal, leaving not a trace of it in Gujarat.

So Deve Gowda's decision to have his son hang on to the chief ministership might just stem from his belated realisation that he may have overplayed his hand. The BJP is making full use of being in power in Karnataka to spread its wings across the state. It already is the single largest party in the assembly: it has 74 MLAs, while the Congress has 65, and the JD (S) 50.

A look at the decisions and pronouncements made by the JD (S), and the tussles between the alliance partners on important issues, also indicate the direction their alliance is taking. During his second Rath Yatra, senior BJP leader L K Advani was disallowed by Deve Gowda from addressing public meeting in Karnataka. The BJP had to save face by announcing that Advani would refrain from addressing any meetings in the state out of respect matinee idol Rajkumar, who had recently died.

Furthermore, with regard to the Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor project, the JD (S) feels that the government acquired Rs 30,000-crore worth of land in surplus of what is actually required. Deve Gowda has wanted to bring in legislation to either return this land to the farmers or to get the state government to auction the land and use the proceeds for rural development. The BJP has not only opposed his decision, it has justified the acquisition.

Also, the JD (S) forced the government to set up a committee of legislators to look into allegations of land-grabbing around Bangalore. JD (S) leaders feel that Congress and BJP leaders have appropriated land worth about Rs 40,000 crore around the state capital. They want the government to take over this land.

To shore up his party's political fortunes, the “Humble Farmer” (as Deve Gowda loves being called) has been pushing for the state government to waive off loans to farmers. The strained relations with the BJP have only led to a prioritising of this demand. At JD (S)'s national council meeting on January 28, a separate resolution was passed on the issues. That Deve Gowda would like the condition of the state's farmers, and the corrective steps his party's government has taken, to be his party's main electoral plank was clear from the language of the resolution.

“From all accounts, it is accepted now by almost all sections of the society that the Indian agriculture is in the throes of great distress. After a sustained hue and cry all over the country, the UPA government at the centre appointed a national commission for farmers and announced a package to save farmers. But these halfway measures failed to inspire the confidence of the farming community and to curb the farmers' suicides, which continue unabated.

“Whereas the Union Government is quite upbeat about foregoing lakhs of crores of tax revenues for promoting SEZs, when it comes to a burden of a few thousand crores to waive off loans of distressed farmers driven to suicide, it shows a kind of reluctance which is unpardonable.

“The situation of farmers in Karnataka mirrors the distress of farmers in the rest of the country. Notwithstanding the glitz and glamour of high-tech progress Karnataka is spearheading, agriculture still supports 60 per cent population in the state and contributes 18 per cent of GDP. With only 28 per cent area under irrigation, Karnataka farmers remain at the mercy of a caparicious monsoon, with drought on the average visiting once every four year and lingering for more than a year at a stretch.

“The JD (S) demands that the farmer's suicides be declared as national disaster and all steps should be taken at war footing to improve the lot of the hands that feed the nation. The JD (S) feels and demands that least that can be done is to write off all loans taken by the farmers from cooperative banks by the state government.

“Similarly JD (S) demands from the central government to write off farmers loans taken from the commercial banks, as most of them are controlled by it. The party demands that the Karnataka government immediately take suitable measures to write off all cooperative loans including interest and penal interest on such loans taken by the farmers. The party further demands that the state government should make appropriate budgetary provision in the next budget to compensate the cooperative credit institutions to get their funds replenished and to approach NABARD to allow the Kamataka government to repay the refinancing loans due from Kamataka cooperative credit institutions in five yearly equated instalments, to enable them to remain healthy to disburse further loans.

“The total outstanding cooperative farmers' loans in Kamataka as on 31.12.2006 amount to Rs 4836.98 crores, including Rs 4198.45 as principal and Rs 638.53 crores in interest. On an average of Rs 24663 per loan account, the total number of cooperative loan accounts stands at 17,78,753.

The JD (S) says that after the Rs 40,000 crore that would be raised from the sale of land grabbed around Bangalore can be used to pay for the farmers' loan waiver, which would amount to Rs 4,836.98 crore.

The BJP was, however, singularly unmoved. It said that the decision would ruin the state's economy. When BJP leader and deputy chief minister B S Yediyurappa, who holds the finance portfolio in the state cabinet, appeared reluctant to include the item in the Budget, the chief

minister threatened to present the Budget himself. The tussle is still on.

This is where Deve Gowda has stalemated the BJP, which knows that it cannot claim credit for the scheme, since the JD (S) has already claimed credit for it. It has also added some vitriol that had it been the BJP's scheme, the party would have implemented it in the states it governs, such as Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan.

Deve Gowda's strategy is two-pronged—wooing the farmers and the rural voters, and working hard to retain the Muslim votes. With regard to the latter, it often means taking on his alliance partner, sometimes harshly.

His son, the chief minister, recently allotted prime land in Bangalore, worth Rs 90 crore, for the construction of Haj House. Deve Gowda also never loses the least opportunity to remind the Muslims of his “pioneering decision” to give them four per cent reservation in jobs in the state.

And, despite an alliance with a Rightwing party, whenever the BJP, in the pursuance of its Hinduttva agenda, organises Shobha Yatras and Virat Hindu Sammelans—which recently led to communal clashes in Bangalore—Deve Gowda gives the BJP a sharp rap across the knuckles for “disturbing the peace”.

During a recent riot in Mangalore in which one person was killed, the chief minister ordered the suspects to be immediately arrested. Among those charged with murder were activists of the Bajrang Dal. The local BJP MLA threatened to resign if the Sangh activists were not released, but the chief minister stuck to his ground.

Similarly, when the BJP recently started a Shobha Yatra to “liberate” the Datta Peeth in Chikmagalur, which Muslims believe to be a shrine of Sufi saint Baba Budangiri, the chief minister threatened with sacking all ministers from the BJP who participated in it. He said that those ministers who wished to attend the Yatra would have to resign first. While no BJP minister took part in the Yatra, when state BJP president Sadanand Gowda defiantly tried to walk towards the shrine, he was packed off to jail.

Deve Gowda has personally been extremely critical of the BJP's Virat Hindu Mahotsavs, saying that they divided the society along communal lines. “What are all these sammelans,” he thundered. “I will organise Virat Kisan sammelans that will promote secular ideology.”

It's not that the BJP has been quietly taking the punches. Its Member of the Legislative Council kicked up a massive row in the state when he alleged that the chief minister had had Rs 150 crore “collected” from the state's mining lobby. The JD (S) believes that the controversy was kicked up with the blessings of the BJP's top leadership. To this day, the “mining scam”, as the case is referred to, remains a widely debated issue in Karnataka.

The split-up campaign is building up. Deve Gowda wants to break the alliance on the anvil of the loan-to-farmers issue. The BJP's leaders, on the other hand, realise that it is in their best interests to keep the alliance, however farcical, going, since unity amidst hostility is still the best way to the chief ministership. The party is counting on the sympathy votes after it is ditched. The latter is certain, even if the former is not.