It is up to the people of Karnataka to decide their future on May 12 — whether they want to be ruled by an inept Congress regime or want good governance under BJP
A BBC report based on “UN-endorsed projections” said, by 2030, if there is no remedial action against Bengaluru's burning lakes, it will be one of those 11 cities in the world that will have no drinking water left and will become uninhabitable. Yes, things have reached a nadir under an inept Congress dispensation in the last four and a half years as Bengaluru's dying lakes like Bellandur and Varthur have turned into a dumping ground with more than 1,600 litres of untreated sewage generated by the city on a daily basis.
Political apathy of the Siddaramaiah Government is further amplified by the fact that 44 per cent of the drinking water never reaches Bengaluru's citizens due to supply leakages. The 633 storm water drains, covering 840 kms, have not been fully desilted. This has added to Bengaluru's civic mess. A fair share of the blame must be shared by the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), run by the Congress-JD(S) combine. It is not Bengaluru alone that has suffered neglect. Mandya, 40 kms from Mysuru, has been the epicentre of agri-distress. Over 3,000 farmers committed suicide in the State between April 2013 and November 2017. The woes of Mandya farmers and the violent Cauvery agitation in 2016, that brought Karnataka to a standstill, had nothing to do with the Cauvery water dispute between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka dating back to 1892.
For instance, in 2015-16, large parts of Karnataka received copious rains but farmers in Mandya were driven to suicide by a negligent dispensation that first asked them to plant crops two months late and then refused to release water as repair work in the Visvesvaraya canal was not complete. The result was that farmers, who spent Rs 15,000 per acre in growing paddy and Rs 25,000 per acre for sugarcane, had no water for their standing crops and ran into massive debts. What could be worse than not releasing water to farmers despite Mandya having four rivers namely Cauvery, Shimsha, Hemavathi and lokapavani running through itIJ
There has also been an alarming rise in the crime graph with the National Crime Records Bureau data for 2016 stating that conviction rate for crimes against women stood at 4.7 per cent in Karnataka and just 3.5 per cent in Bengaluru. It was the same for crimes against Dalits/SCs, where the conviction rate stood at a shocking 2.8 per cent, with only 22 of the 779 cases resulting in conviction. Worse still, more than 6,484 cases against Dalits are pending in various courts. As for STs, the conviction rate is a big zero. Chincholi Taluk in Gulbarga district, which is a lingayat stronghold, scores 0.252 on the Human Development Index and 0.330 on the Food Security Index, reflecting how the Government has paid lip-service to the well-being of the lingayats. The fate of the Kurubas, a dominant OBC community in Badami, is no better. To top it all, the Congress has opposed to grant constitutional status to the OBC commission.
While on the one hand, Siddaramaiah has doled out Rs 50,000 for every Muslim girl who gets married under the ‘Shaadi Bhagya’ scheme, the Congress stands opposed to the empowerment of Muslim women as it rejected the abolition of Triple Talaq in the Rajya Sabha. Further, lawlessness in Karnataka has been abetted by the Karnataka Government that has chosen to patronise radicalised Islamist terror outfits like the Popular Front of India (PFI).
Karnataka has also earned the unique distinction of being the only State to have been influenced by all three Acharyas. While Adi Shankaracharya established the famous mutt in Sringeri in Karnataka, Ramanujacharya was born in Tamil Nadu but stayed for 14 years in Melukote in Karnataka and then there is Madhvacharya, born in Udupi in Karnataka. Add to this, the enriching legacy of Sufi saints from Karnataka, namely Hazrat Syed Shah, Hazrat Shaikh Saad and Hazrat Shaikh Sirajuddin. However, thanks to the Karnataka Government, the land of lord Basava has been reduced to celebrating Tipu Jayanti in honour of a brutal, tyrannical bigot who forced Brahmins to commit suicide en masse and took 40,000 Kodagus in Coorg as prisoners, burning down villages of Kushalpura and Madikeri.
This May 12, Karnataka has a tryst with destiny to rise above the present Congress Government’s divisive politics and vote for ‘Sabka saath, Sabka vikas’ — the clarion call of Prime Minister Narendra Modi — that seeks to unite all Kannadigas under the umbrella of good governance. This has been amply demonstrated by the fact that even as the Hublot-wearing Karnataka Chief Minister was busy snoozing, centrally-sponsored irrigation schemes under the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana helped uplift the lives of millions of farmers via the Sri Rameswar irrigation project, Karanja project, Upper Tunga project, Narayanpur left Bank Canal and Bheema lift irrigation project.
Be it laying the foundation stone for the conversion of the Bengaluru Mysuru highway into six-lane road, four-laning the Belgaum-Khanapur section of the NH 4A highway or for the 160 km Belgaum-Kagwad highway, 23.6 km long Shiradi Ghat tunnel linking Hassan and Mangaluru port, at a cost of Rs 10,000 crore, approval for a port at Belikeri and 41 works covering 3,726 kms at a cost of Rs 85,000 crore under the Bharatmala Pariyojana, or the commitment to spend Rs 1.45 lakh crore for developing roads, ports and highways in the next two years, the Narendra Modi Government has always stood with Karnataka and Kannadigas, without expecting any pay back time from the electorate. Nonetheless, how and what the electorate chooses to do on May 12, will now set the tone for Karnataka's future.
(The writer is an Economist & Chief Spokesperson for BJP, Mumbai)