Crippled
by corruption, Karnataka is now brutalised by blackmail. Corruption
was the collective contribution of all parties. What the Congress
carried on quietly, the JD (S) took up with gusto and BJP turned into
a celebration. Blackmail is the exclusive contribution of the BJP.
Congressmen can't think of it because they shudder before their High
Command. In the BJP, the High Command shudders before Yeddyurappa.
Yeddyurappa's victory is BJP's tragedy – and Karnataka's
misfortune.
Look
at the misfortune first. Historically one of India's best-governed
states, Karnataka witnessed audacious misuse of power from the day
BJP's first Chief Minister took office. He and some of his colleagues
focussed on illegal land transactions as a major activity of
government. The principal financiers of the party, the Bellary lobby,
took to plain plundering of the state's good earth in violation of
many laws. Wounded by its keepers, Karnataka bled.
When
half a dozen ministers including the Chief Minister were jailed,
prudence demanded a moment's pause. The BJP as a party and the state
government as a constitutional entity should have re-looked at where
they were going. They didn't. Instead, they mounted a show of
defiance, politicians looking for loopholes in the law and the
Bellary Brotherhood making a suspected bid to bribe a judge. The
judge landed in jail in a demonstration of the ugliness of today's
politics.
The
neglect of governance could not have happened at a more inopportune
moment. The state was in the grip of a serious drought, but Water
Resources Minister Bommai had no time to bother about it. Farmers
were facing starvation, but Agriculture Minister Katti was busy with
resignation games. A grand show was held a couple of months ago to
attract big-ticket investments to the state. Industrialists were
upset that not a file moved since the show because Industries
Minister Nirani was in the plot to topple the Chief Minister.
All
this to satisfy one man's ambition. So all-consuming was
Yeddyurappa's passion for power that even after coming out of jail,
he acted as though nothing untoward had happened. He spent his not
negligible resources to keep a few dozen MLAs on his side. This
support base was a weapon with which he threatened the party bosses
in Delhi, knowing well that the bosses would go to any length to see
that the BJP did not lose Karnataka. Although his threats were
effective, Yeddyurappa knew that he was too tainted to become Chief
Minister in one go. He had a solution to that problem too. He found
in foe-turned-friend Jagadish Shettar the fittest person to become
the Manmohan Singh of Karnataka, and let him, Yeddyurappa, be the
Sonia Gandhi of Karnataka.
The
puzzle is that the BJP's leaders in Delhi do not see that approving
Yeddyurappa's scheme is equal to approving corruption. They are said
to condone Yeddyurappa's record including the jailing so as to ensure
the allegiance of the Lingayat community. First of all, will the BJP
really gain by doing what no party has openly done before, namely,
split Karnataka into Lingayats (17 percent), Vokkaligas (15 percent)
and others (68 percent)? Secondly, how do they know that the silent
majority of Lingayats will accept the position that they have no
leader other than the second most tainted politician in Karnataka's
history (after Janardhana Reddy)? This is a community that gave India
one of its noblest philosophical creeds. It has a proud public record
and several eminent leaders.
On
the other hand, a principled stand against the threat politics of
Yeddyurappa could give the BJP a swing in its favour. Yeddyurappa's
flaunted support base is sustained by the feeling among BJP
legislators that his bullying will put him back in power. Call that
bluff and the support will melt away. The Congress and the JD (S) are
in a mess, which gives the BJP a reasonable chance to beat them at
the next election. But the rivals have a propaganda plank that is
powerful: that the BJP promotes corruption officially. The BJP can
demolish that plank. All it needs is some guts.