Date:02/05/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/05/02/stories/2008050253031100.htm

Opinion - News Analysis

Delimitation: pros and cons in Karnataka

— Photo: Bhagya Prakash K.

Masks of leading political leaders for use in the Karnataka Assembly election campaigns.

The elections to the Karnataka Assembly, brought on a year ahead of schedule by the collapse of the Janata Dal (Secular)-Bharatiya Janata Party coalition government in November 2007, are under way and on course. Despite pressures from some parties to postpone the elections ostensibly on the ground that delimitation could not be completed quickly enough, a determined Election Commission pushed ahead, completed the process and scheduled the polls for May in order that a new government would be in place before President's Rule ends.

The State will vote in three phases: 11 districts (comprising 89 constituencies) on May 10; 10 districts (66 constituencies) on May 16; and eight districts (69 constituencies) on May 24. The elections will be held in the hottest time of the year when temperatures in north Karnataka hover around 48 degrees Celsius.

Under the delimitation exercise, the constituencies were redrawn in accordance with the 2001 census to ensure parity in voter numbers in each constituency, and to raise the number of reserved constituencies in proportion to the Schedule Caste and Schedule Tribe population.

Profound impact

Delimitation will have a profound impact on the electoral process and its outcome. In the first place, it has corrected the failure of the electoral system to give representation to the SCs and the STs in proportion to their demographic presence. In the 2004 elections, 189 were general constituencies, and 33 were reserved for the SCs and two for the STs. In 2008, there are 173 general constituencies, 36 reserved for the SCs and 15 for the STs. The correction now gives these sections representation in 23 per cent of the constituencies, which is roughly their population percentage to the total population. Delimitation has also caused constituencies to increase or shrink in size, to disappear in some cases, or to get a new reservation tag in others. Faced with this altered and uncertain electoral geography, many a political stalwart has been forced to migrate to another constituency or even drop out of the race.

On the positive side, delimitation has opened the electoral field to the less privileged sections and, in doing so, has broken the entrenched political sway of individual politicians and political families over long-held and nurtured constituencies. Bellary, Karnataka's mining district, provides a good example of this. Delimitation has increased the number of constituencies from eight to nine, but almost all of them reserved. While in 2004 all the seats were under the general category, now seven are reserved (five for the SCs and two for the STs). This has shaken the hold of the Ghorpade, Lad and Allum families, mine owner-millionaires all, over their traditional constituencies.

The delimitation exercise also reflects the fast paced urbanisation in Karnataka. For instance, the Greater Bangalore agglomeration accounts for almost 10 per cent of the total number of constituencies (the number here has increased from 12 in 2004 to 28 ). However, with a growing representation of legislators from urban areas in government, the danger that issues of the countryside, and of an agriculture that is stagnant if not in crisis, may be neglected under the new dispensation is real.

Role of money power

The second important factor in these elections is the unprecedented role money has played in selection of candidates by the three main parties - the Congress, the Janata Dal (Secular) and the BJP. Of course, the election expenditure graph has seen a steady rise over the years. However, the centrality of wealth as a factor, it appears, has been given weightage in candidate selection. There has been a desperate scramble for seats, with disappointed aspirants and their followers gheraoing and even stoning party offices. But most strikingly, the elections have seen the entry of a new segment of candidates drawn from the nouveau riche class of mine owners, land developers and contractors, and politicians who have made their fortunes in real estate in Bangalore. These factors point to a new phenomenon in the politics of the State.

Changing face

In Bangalore, for example, the statements of assets furnished in the affidavits of candidates provide a glimpse of this trend. Kupendra Reddy, a realtor and first-time candidate of the Congress in Bommanahalli, has assets of over Rs.180 crore. M. "Layout" Krishnappa, Congress nominee from Vijaynagar, has assets worth over Rs. 94 crore. The BJP candidate in Bommanahalli, G. Prasad Reddy, has assets valued at over Rs. 313 crore, and Anil Lad, a mine owner who is contesting on Congress ticket from Bellary city, is worth over Rs.147 crore.

The transformation of Karnataka's economy in the last decade, in which the state has been a key initiator, has deeply impacted politics and its practice. The state in Karnataka, considered in the 1970s and 1980s a leader in implementation of land reforms, of a radical programme of decentralisation and other progressive welfare measures, has changed course since 1999.

Its willingness to provide land and common property resources on easy terms for mining, real estate development, Information Technology campuses, industrial estates, townships, malls and special economic zones, has, it appears, created and enriched a new class of entrepreneur-politicians who find representation across the political spectrum.

The electoral process is still in its initial phase and there is yet no clear reading on the likely outcome. The elections will, however, determine whether the forces countervailing the predatory interests will emerge to bring back the State's agenda for a more inclusive path of development.