State of play: EVMs here! What about the poll dates?

Something isn’t quite right about the ongoing Nalapad-Vidwath fracas. And I’m not talking about the judicial aspect of it at all. That’s the one thing, one can take comfort in - that at least one of the institutions in our nation is independent, unbiased and adheres to the law, both in letter and spirit. Its not the singing parrot that the likes of Kapil Sibal have dubbed the CBI - rightly or wrongly - after the Karti Chidambaram arrest!

One has tried to be scrupulously fair, not wade into the controversy or take sides as events have unfolded these past two weeks, but the truth is, it’s left me, mother of a son of roughly the same age, deeply uncomfortable at the manner in which a young man was left near comatose after he was beaten up by a wannabe politician and his cohorts. The provocation was apparently about Vidwath refusing to take his injured foot off a chair at the restaurant they were all at. 

Was that really, all it was? Why haven’t the statements of the other well-heeled customers’ that have been recorded been made public? Or, the waiters? The staff? What turned seemingly normal young men into crazed goons?

On my own son’s birthday last year, a bunch of young people, drunk, waving bottles of scotch, in a swish BMW with a broken tail light, jumped over our garden wall and beat up my son and his friends because they didn’t take kindly to his throwaway remark to his friend to park on the side street when he saw how the BMW was cruising down the main road – a one –way - in the wrong direction! The police arrived promptly enough when I complained. But NOTHING happened! The police said that without a number plate it would be difficult to track down the drunken louts in their fancy car. Except, how many BMWs can there be in the city with a broken tail-light? 

So one empathises with Vidwath’s father, one shares his unease, and understands his refusal to have any truck with his son’s attackers’ kin,  or make a settlement. But here’s the niggle and the nub. The doctors at the hospital have been telling us for days that the injured boy was well enough to go home.  The police, are telling us the exact opposite , that ‘he can’t lift a spoon, let alone a pen’ and that he couldn’t speak so how could they record a statement! 

Without a report on the medical status of Vidwath, and a report based on CCTV footage or eyewitnesses, one doesn’t know what actually went down in this rich kids’ club. Was it a plain ol’ argument between hot-headed youngsters with far too much money for their own good, that went south?  And, has it now turned into a tussle between the boys’ respective fathers – both, highly influential men with strong political and societal connections; one, an elected official, and one, not; one with the Congress, the other leaning towards the BJP. 

Incidentally, my pocket money for the week even when I was 18, was all of twenty five rupees, which I saved up for the weekly movies! When I was ten, I got 50 paisa a day – 20 paisa for a cola and 10 paisa for chikki!  The rest went to buy books and comics in Delhi’s Shankar Market. Simple, uncomplicated. What do these high-rollers live on, I wonder. Sons of actors, politicians and other Mr Fix Its!! Twenty five paise times a hundred thousand, several times over!

Either way, one hears that Vidwath's statement has finally been recorded Saturday. And Nalapad’s lawyers will try and submit another bail plea on Monday.
But my concerns go beyond this fracas. The BJP MPs and MLAs from the city who are close to Vidwath’s family clearly want to turn it into a poll issue -  conflate a brawl between two young men into a breakdown of law and order in the city and link it to the coastal districts where an attempt to make the campaign reach an inflexion point as it did in U.P., MP and Rajasthan over cow slaughter could well be on the cards. 

Electorally, despite the Congress' confidence that it has a 100 seats in the bag - will that be enough - it's not going to be easy. The BJP has consistently done way better in the city of Bengaluru than in the rural.  Despite the slew of projects that are being inaugurated in the city from multi-level parking lots and roads and underpasses – not one of them, complete -  for the wind to shift in the Congress’ favour, they need to win the poor over, and not the well-heeled who traditionally go with the BJP and the JD(S). With the slums getting 24 hours water and now affordable food with the Indira Canteens, the Congress may have its foot in the door. 

As for the 13 lakh young people who will be first time voters this time, will the promise of jobs and a better life that Prime Minister Modi held out in 2014, reel them in? This is where the Siddaramaiah government, which has taken a huge leaf out of the Congress’ tried and tested socialistic line and handed out freebies on every imaginable cause to every caste and community, Muslim, Dalit, OBC, Kurubas, hopes it will score. Drawing in investors to build SMEs and boost jobs is still a work in progress, but will the sops or should that be the promise of sops reel in the not so committed voter? 

The BJP tacticians continue to believe that their man B.S. Yeddyurappa holds the key to Vidhana Soudha, and that his hold over the Lingayat community is the BJP's ticket back to power. If he taps into the state's hitherto tamped down agrarian distress with the promise of a loan waiver, that green shawl could win it for the BJP; murmurs of anger against the BSY coterie calling the shots on everything, and keeping the saffron old guard out, notwithstanding. The BJP's incredible run in the North-east, it’s all eyes on Karnataka.

My only quibble – how does the BJP's push for the Ram Mandir, an avatar of Vishnu, sit with the Lingayats, who are, Shaivites? . More so now, with Siddaramaiah throwing the special status for Lingayats into the mix?  

The EVMs may have arrived, but there's feverish speculation that we could have a midnight amendment to the constitution that could make the BJP's parliament and assembly simultaneous poll plan a reality, a la GST. And, we still don’t have the poll dates yet!