Why the BJP was decimated

State assembly results show that voters will come out strongly against corruption

The voters of Karnataka have delivered a decisive mandate against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government in the state. The Congress party looks all set to occupy the regal portals of the Vidhana Soudha, which is the seat of state legislature in Karnataka.

The results of the recent assembly polls have shocked even the most hard line poll pundits. While many had predicted that the Congress would fare well in these polls, very few had imagined that the BJP would be mauled so badly. The saffron party has been virtually decimated to the extent of being placed in the third position behind the Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular), an ignominious situation for them indeed.

This assembly elections recorded the second highest voter turnout in 35 years with a polling percentage of 71.29. There were 2,940 candidates in 223 Assembly segments, with the election in Periyapatna constituency being put off due to the death of a candidate. What are the reasons for this dismal performance by the BJP?

Corruption seems to have been the main issue in this election. The infamous scandals involving the Bellary brothers related to mining issues, resignations of various ministers due to impropriety and the ouster of the then Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa who was indicted by the Lok Ayukta on charges of corruption, played a huge role in the decisive shift of public opinion against the BJP.

However one must inject a dose of caution before we credit the Congress for its victory. The Karnataka voter may have punished the BJP this time. However, they are also aware of the various corruption scandals that have plagued the Congress-led UPA government in New Delhi. They may be in an equally punishing mood during the Lok Sabha elections in 2014, with the Congress being at the receiving end.

It is a dream gone sour for the BJP. Karnataka was the first south Indian state that the BJP won when Yeddyurappa became chief minister in 2008. While this was trumpeted as a great victory, there were some ominous signs even then. Certain shady individuals like the mining barons of Bellary district led by Janardhan Reddy had funded the BJP and this was well known to the central leadership of the party.

In many ways the BJP government was doomed at the very start of its tenure by its association with individuals of dubious repute. A plethora of corruption scandals followed, ranging from illegal mining to various instances of land grabbing by ministers. Yeddyurappa was relieved of the CM’s post and this caused an irreparable rift in the party. He formed the Karnataka Janata Paksha (KJP) with the help of many other BJP stalwarts like CM Udasi ,who left the party with him. Yeddyurappa always had a mass following among the Lingayats, who are a very powerful community in Karnataka and constitute a sizable proportion of the electorate.

This election has been largely lost in North Karnataka. This region accounts for 96 seats. In the 2008 elections, the BJP won a record 56 seats in a region once considered a Congress fortress. This was mainly due to the consolidation of Lingayat votes in favour of the BJP. North Karnataka has always been crucial in deciding the fate of political parties in the state. In the 1985 elections, Ramakrishna Hegde came to power with 139 MLA’s, of which 60 came from North Karnataka. In the 1989 elections, Veerendra Patil of the Congress became chief minister, largely due to the 68 seats the party won in North Karnataka. The loss of Lingayat support has proven very costly indeed for the BJP.

Once the excitement of the election results has subsided, the real challenging task of governance begins. Rural Karnataka has been severely neglected with reports of numerous farmer suicides. About 100 farmers have committed suicide this year alone, largely due to drought and ever increasing input costs. A total 2,986 farmers have committed suicide in Karnataka in the last decade. The new government has to remedy this immediately. Recent studies have shown that Karnataka is among the most corrupt states in India. Cities and towns in Karnataka are bursting at its seams and lack adequate infrastructure when it comes to transportation, community hygiene and health. These challenges are immense and one hopes that the electoral verdict against corruption and maladministration will resonate loudly in the ears of all political parties.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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Book Review: Stringer: A Reporter's Journey in the Congo

A land torn asunder

Violence has become synonymous with Congo. Explosion of violence in Congo has been hitting headlines incessantly. Also, in recent times, Angelina Jolie has been visiting often as UNHCR goodwill ambassador to meet the women suffering due to war still ravaging. This is clearly indicative of the precarious situation in Congo. The situation was no less dangerous when in 2006 Anjan Sundaram had taken the decision to go to Congo to get something ‘to hold on to’ and work as a journalist. His transformation from a mathematics scholar under the tutelage of Serge Lang, a legend of mathematical theory, to a reporter on ground was encompassing.  He ‘broke with’ America. Congo ‘consumed’ him.

This book, Stringer- A Reporter’s Journey in the Congo, is all about Sundaram’s experience on the ground - replete with a journalist’s struggle to get a foothold in a place which was unpredictable. The way he has cloaked his personal experience with words is very smooth. The book begins with the lines, ‘I was already feeling perturbed.’ It initiates a reader into Sundarm’s run to save himself from the pitfalls ahead.

Family of Jose and Nana hosted Sundaram in Kinshasha and their house served as the anchor for him to explore the places around, consequently meeting the local people and his ‘aide’ Mossi. Mossi, as described by Sundaram, was like a close support and his description is that of a friend in need. ‘Mossi Mwassi was a refugee from South Africa. He had a short crop of grey hair.’ His face screwed up when he saw Nana. But Mossi was undeniably helpful: he knew all the journalists and also which stories were hot’. Sundaram’s way with words enbales him to capture every change of scene to perfection. When it begins to feel that the description of Congo is stretching somewhat, he shifts to Serge Lang. At other times, he gets back to America to make the reader understand the circumstances from which he reached the house of Jose and Nana. Annie was Sundaram’s bank teller and Jose and Nana were her in-laws.

The readers will enjoy the change of scene as they are at the right time. But the best is the way even the minute details have been put into words. This makes one travel to the very spot about which Sundaram is writing or become a part of the experience which Sundaram underwent.

Writing about his return to Jose and Nana’s house after he was forced to give away his phone and most importantly the numbers saved in it, Sundaram says, “People swelled towards us like a sea. We sat in an old Volkswagen whose twelve cushioned seats had been pulled out and replaced with wooden benches; soon we were more than thirty inside, cramped side by side, hands between our knees. We squeezed more for the women who brought in her drooling infant. The windows were sealed shut, so there was no breeze, and inside it was suffocating. The human smell engulfed us.”

Sundaram lived in a ‘dingy room’ but this had put him close to people and felt the ‘pulse of the people’. This, as Mossi had said, was good to ‘live cheap, move like the locals and discuss the issues that mattered to them.’

The book is about the way Sundaram managed to gain a little balance in a completely strange place and then moved around to find stories which led him to report about militias and their attacks. There are also people from India and Pakistan who are as important as the local citizens. Sundaram reported the violent events at a place called Fataki and he was helped by his Pakistani friend Ali who gave him the necessary details and where to go.

Apart from the way Sundaram has narrated the entire experience, it also brings to the fore the way he took initiatives and his friendship and approach of an ordinary man, but with strong mind, kept him going even to the most difficult places.

Thanks to the vivid first hand description that Sundaram provides of Congo, the reader is able to understand the ravages that Congo has faced simply in order to satiate the greed of the people who are hardly aware of the predicament of the land.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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A Toxic Tale

Animal Planet is crawling with them. So is Nat Geo Wild. It’s snakes and the modern day snake charmers, herpetologists with a penchant for one way conversations – folks like Austin Stevens, Jeff Corwin, Brady Barr, the man who started it all, the late great Steve ‘Crikey’ Irwin, and of course, our  home grown sweet talking snake wrangler – Gerry Martin, who seem to have taken over all the prime time slots on animal tv.

They make for wonderfully exciting viewing, I will give you that. Most folks, even those that love dogs and cats and birds, and find monkeys cute and white mice adorable, shudder at the thought of a snake slithering along their arm.

Snakes inspire revulsion and reverence in equal measure. The scales, the forked tongue, the unblinking eyes and the possibility of a lethal liquid flowing through their switchblade fangs elevates them to the status of a god for a few and the very devil for the rest.

So I can understand why it is like standing barefoot on the very edge of reality tv to watch a man as mortal as you and me, literally kiss death as his lips touch the raised hood of a king cobra. These men catch mambas by their tails, taipans by the neck and play with rattling rattlers like they were a child’s toy. The tiniest scratch from any one of these snakes could lead to a painful and hideous end for these experts.  Even with antivenom, the recovery process is uncertain, slow and very painful. So those men are risking a whole lot for good television. Should you try this at home? Sure, go ahead. If you’re as incredibly lucky as I once was, you will survive both the encounter and the feeling of having been monumentally stupid when the realization of how close you were to a grisly death has washed over you. And if you are not, you will be in that privileged ringside seat to the spectacle of watching the limb that suffered the hemotoxic bite disintegrate in front of your very eyes as you writhe in the kind of agony that might make getting impaled on a stake feel like a vacation. Or you could try guessing which of your organs is shutting down first as the neurotoxins motor along your arteries. Whichever the nature of the venom, it is unlikely to be a quiet death, I promise.  

Here’s my story that I might have shared in bits and pieces on earlier occasions but this time I present it to you in its entirety as a prelude to ‘what to do when the naughty one from Eden comes calling’.

A few springs ago, I was walking out of my office which was then sitting pretty near the green glades of Sanjay Van near Qutab Institutional Area, when I spotted the guards crowding around a pair of flower pots. I peered over their shoulders and saw them poking at a long slim snake with sticks. More than two feet long, a deep dirty brown with bands running rings around it. Some wanted to kill it with sticks, some suggested burning it while a few where of the opinion that it should either be left alone or carried outside the premises and released.

One of the men said that he had often seen these snakes around the area. Now that got me thinking. If this snake was common in the area, it was important to know whether this snake was venomous or not and what should one do if one of these snakes just pops up around a corner. So I suggested that they put the snake, unharmed and whole, in a container so I could take it to the zoo and get it identified and find suggestions for a viable protocol if this kind of an encounter was to happen again (mobile phone cameras weren’t really de rigueur in those days and so physically carrying the snake was the only way out).

A plastic bottle was procured and the snake, still sluggish in the cool of the morning was poked and picked and placed inside the bottle. One of the guards thought the snake might find the confines of the bottle claustrophobic and punched a few holes into the cap. But now the holes seemed big enough for the snake to escape through them and so he stuck a few twigs to plug the holes. Equipped thus I stuck the bottle between the seat and the door to keep the bottle upright and drove off to the zoo. A speed breaker later, the bottle keeled over and a forked tongue flickered out of the port window in the bottle cap. If the snake got out, it would be impossible to find in the folds of the car’s insides. I had to pull over and set things right. Like I said, it was a monumentally stupid decision to transport a potentially dangerous reptile in this fasion and then to drive with this distraction through Delhi’s notoriously hostile traffic.

Anyway, we both survived the trip to the zoo where I explained my situation to the folks manning the gate and I was ushered in to reptile house. I held out the bottle with the gaping holes in the cap (the twigs had given in to gravity and had fallen through. The little snake had climbed along the length of the twigs and was now poking its head out of the bottle). The man at the reptile house shrank back in horror. “Krait! It’s a Krait”, he whispered. My hands must have started shaking involuntarily at the exclamation for the bottle vibrated in my hand and the snake dropped down again to the bottom.

A krait?! I had been cradling a krait all this while? t krait in Re first time I came across those five dreaded letters was in Rudyard Kipling’s Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, that unforgettable tale that pitted a pair of cobras against a brave and wily pet mongoose. In the story, Kipling’s krait was smaller but as venomous (as a matter of fact, ounce for ounce, krait venom is even more potent than cobra venom) and dangerous as those hooded emissaries of doom. “It is still a little chilly these days. This one got out a little too soon and that’s why you are still alive”, snapped the zoo ‘expert’. “Half an hour is all it will take for this little devil’s neurotoxins to take you to the brink of respiratory failure”, he added.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

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