‘The evolution of Karnataka politics over the decades shows how representation, participation and accountability are inherently contested concepts’ | Photo credits: K. Pichumani
As Karnataka heads towards the ticket distribution phase of its upcoming assembly elections (single phase on May 10), we can revisit the murky tale of illegal campaign funding in politics. Karnataka has become an example of ‘crorepati-karan’ of Indian politics after liberalisation. In the last election, 97% of the elected state members of the Legislative Assembly were crorepatis. According to a report by election watchdog, Association for Democratic Reforms, Karnataka MLAs were also termed as the highest earning members of the Legislative Assembly in the country, based on average assets of ₹34.59 crore.
The dominance of wealthy local elites over grassroots politics has been widely portrayed in media and policy advocacy circles as representing the decline of electoral democracy—a corrupt feudal polity run by businessmen-politicians. The centrality of ideas and programs in party competition is often replaced by the dominance of money and local elite-controlled patronage machines. In particular, advocates of electoral reform portray interlocking patronage machines (networks of power and wealth distribution that bind local political elites to fixers/middlemen and faction/state-level leaders from above) as pathological entrants. which essentially corrode the three pillars of the one. Working democracy.
These pillars of democracy are as follows: one, the concept of representation; Since 99% of the electorate of any state is made up of non-millionaires, the political class is perceived to be socio-economically distinct from the electorate they are meant to represent. two, the concept of participation; Local elites are associated with capturing elites or closing the political process to individuals outside a narrow group of business politicians. and, three, the concept of accountability; Local patronage machines are associated with corruption, widespread factionalism, fragmentation of state power, and the gradual disintegration of party organization and associated accountability mechanisms.
However, this bleak portrayal of increasing money-power leading to a lack of grassroots democracy not only reflects a one-sided portrayal of political reality, but also displays a willful blindness to the inherent contradictions and trade-offs in the process of democratization. Indeed, the development of Karnataka politics over the decades shows how representation, participation and accountability are inherently contested concepts, which can take on different meanings for different constituencies.
questions of representation, participation
Political scientists Milan Vaishnav and Devesh Kapoor trace the explosion of illegal campaign funding in Karnataka to the reign of Congress chief minister D. Devaraj Urs. A follower of Indira Gandhi’s pro-poor populist strategy, Devaraj Urs was a transformative pioneer of backward caste/class social engineering, whose political legacy still informs state politics and redistributive, pro-Ahinda politics (alliances between backward castes desire of). , Dalits, Adivasis and Muslims, who constitute four-fifths of the population) belong to future Congress chief minister Siddaramaiah.
During the decades of Congress dominance, the powerful landowning castes of Lingayats and Vokkaligas (with a small number of upper castes) controlled the political economy through a process of vertical electoral mobilization through a Congress organization led by dominant castes. and which provided only limited Pathways to upward group mobility. Political scientist Mary E. Breeding, in her paper, “The Micro-politics of Vote Banks in Karnataka” (2011), argues that the major change in post-Urs Karnataka politics is the transformation of patronage-based vote-banks. Hierarchical, opaque and vertical form of mobilization to a more decentralised, accountable and horizontal form of mobilization.
Similarly, according to James Manor, a long-time scholar of Karnataka politics, Devaraj Urs channeled illegal campaign financing primarily to his political opponents (major caste rivals in his own Congress organisation, or the rival Janata Dal which has identified itself with the Vokkaligas and Lingayats). The middle had also taken root). Instead, Urs attempted to create a counter-oligarch of marginalized communities outside traditional party structures, plugging them into the center of the high-rent protection network he operated.
These counter-elite forces brought to the fore substantive representation (relative bargaining power in terms of policy formulation/implementation) for marginalized communities, who had long been directly constrained in descriptive and symbolic forms of representation. As the socialist turn of North Indian politics after the Green Revolution also testifies, the progressive politics of the marginalized is possible only through a fundamental accumulation of economic capital by the co-caste elite, often through clandestine means. Consider the case of B. Sriramulu, a tribal Valmiki Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA who heads the political machine backed by the Reddy brothers in Ballari (Bellary). The BJP was forced not only to nullify Sri Sriramulu’s expulsion on corruption charges, but also to acknowledge his personal ownership of the Valmiki vote-bank, as the community voted for Sri Sriramulu’s fledgling party across northern Karnataka. Left BJP. Data from previous Lokniti Post poll studies show that 33% of voters in Karnataka vote primarily for local candidates, while 15% in Uttar Pradesh say the same.
Finally, personal/factional alliances in Karnataka have also encouraged pluralistic alliances over the exclusive or polarizing pattern of ideological mobilization of the BJP. Lingayats, for example, the BJP’s core base, favor the party for patronage opportunities rather than ideological affinity. When BS Yediyurappa parted ways with the party before 2013, most of the Lingayat power base (MLAs, religious leaders, businessmen and about half of the former BJP Lingayat-voter base) joined the strongman’s separate unit. This may also explain the BJP’s central leadership’s paradoxical strategy of enthroning Bommai (for fear of alienating volatile Lingayats), while allowing ideologically extreme party/affiliated factions to undermine his leadership. Can also give
accountability issue
Now, on to the point of accountability. Like the older Jewish concept of religious sin (not rooted in any independent moral standard) but in breach of covenant between a leader and a chosen community of followers, the political sin of corruption is far from any objective or independent measuring standard. Political sections of marginalized communities may see concessions/incentives to corporates as a form of corruption; The privileged classes may see the distribution of gifts and goods to the poor during elections as a form of corruption. There is considerable scholarly literature on pre-election spending as that rare period when political machines privilege the poor over the rich, and the portrayal of pre-election gifts not as vote-buying bribes but as a measure of winnability and longevity. It is in the form of a symbolic gesture. -Term protection delivery capability. The difference between corruption and good governance probably depends on what is considered a sacred political agreement and who is considered to be a chosen community of followers.
Asim Ali is a political researcher and columnist