In summer, the singular beauty of the winding road that takes you from Gundlupet to the border with Kerala, is the carpet of yellow sunflowers that stretch as far back as the eye can see. As the sun sets, the river glinting in the distance, this is picturebook countryside, as perfect as it can get.
But that was before the drought set in. Instead of lush green fields and the floriculture that sustained many of the farming communities here, the earth is parched, rivers have run dry, farmers are staring at penury.
As of Friday, as campaigning to the two constituencies of Gundlupet and Nanjangud drew to a close, one distraught farmer in Gundlupet decided to end his life. Unless the heavens open up and the rains come down, the farmers of Chamarajnagar district may go where the sugarcane farmers of Mandya did when their fields turned barren two years ago - farmers, burdened with loans they couldn’t pay back, burnt their fields, and themselves. The sugar lobby, powerful, many carrying political heft, block all attempts at redressal. Has the message not gone home to the high-flying candidates and their well-heeled ministerial backers from Bengaluru? A row of empty pots greeted Congress candidate Geetha Mahadev Prasad, the ‘grieving’ widow, when her cavalcade rolled into Bannithalapura. The BJP wasn’t spared either. Its candidate, Niranjan Kumar was reportedly given the same treatment when he arrived, asking for votes in Koothanooru village.
And yet, the language and the tenor of these bypolls, necessitated when one man’s ego was punctured when he was dropped unceremoniously for non-performance from the chief minister’s cabinet, focused on everything from ‘insulting Dalit pride’ and ‘bringing a deserving Lingayat back as chief minister’ and ‘mirroring Uttar Pradesh’s consolidation of the Hindu vote’, rather than the stark issues of life and death that stare these farming communities in the face.
Not one of the barbs and jibes that mock CM Siddaramaiah, and opposition leader B.S. Yeddyurappa, none of that mud-slinging – the latest is the never heard before charge (!!) that both camps have been distributing money - brings up the water scarcity and the poor monsoon that has dogged the state for the last three years.
Scoff at UP’s Yogi Adityanath as much as you want. But he, unlike the current Congress dispensation, has given the farmers of U.P a breather by unconditionally waiving all farm loans. Mr Siddaramaiah’s calculated move to leave such a waiver out of this year’s budget and weave it into next year’s budget ahead of the 2018 assembly polls may make perfect electoral sense. But it is inhumane. And impolitic. The BJP’s former CM Jagadish Shettar did it, and it fell to the Congress to implement it. Remember? The BJP’s chief ministerial hopeful BSY had clearly not thought things through when 24 hours before polling, he handed wads of cash over to the wife of the farmer who took his own life. No doubt, a calculated risk. Except, sporting a green turban doesn’t prove you’re pro-farmer. No farmer will buy that story.
The problem is, the electoral math of these poll bounty hunters rarely goes beyond mindlessly pandering to a vote bank. Whether it’s Mr. Siddaramaiah, who openly says his is an Ahinda budget. Or the BJP who, equally openly says the Lingayat community of south Karnataka, drawn from the higher echelons of the sub-sect are finally going to back BSY, a high born Lingayat, rather than the lesser Lingayat Geetha, while Srinivasprasad, glosses over the rank neglect of a constituency he has represented for five terms as an MP and a MLA, while only talking up the issue of Dalit pride.
Now, let’s see if the people of Nanjangud and Gundlupet, can see beyond all the b*#@@c#@@*, restore southern pride, however dark we all are, and vote smart …
