Karnataka: In a drought, the best thing to do? Get into a poll campaign!
It’s an election sans the usual trappings-autorickshaws running around with loudspeakers calling out to voters and flex boards dotting prominent landmarks. But the future of the candidates is being decided over cups of tea in the towns and villages of Nanjangud.
While roadside tea stalls are seeing heated discussions over cups of tea and smoking of beedies, the bars too have become "addas " of political debate that go on late into the night till the people are forcibly evicted by the police much after the official closure time. For many villagers the campaign and the bypoll is a diversion from the real troubles of the drought that has made their lives a misery for the last four years and they are eagerly embracing it, endlessly discussing the possibilities and the politics of the candidates at the roadside tea stall and bars.
One hot topic of discussion is whether the bypoll is warranted with the state assembly elections due in March- April next year. Is all the expenditure worth it when the constituency has been reeling under a drought for four years and people trek long distances to fetch a pail of water, ask the farmers, pointing to their fields that have developed cracks and the dry Kapila river, that has left the taluk with a severe drinking water crisis.
"The bypoll may be a matter of prestige for Mr V Srinivasaprasad (the BJP candidate), but he could have stayed away from active politics without quitting the Congress when the assembly polls are so near," says a disgruntled farmer, Nagesh Kumar, of Hedathale village.
But despite their troubles, the people seldom talk of development in the taluk ,which is dominated by Dalits and Lingayats. Issue like the dwindling production of "Nanjangud rasabale", a rare kind of banana with a GI tag, that is grown in the taluk, are dwarfed by caste rivalry. "Unfortunately no one talks about development as caste dominates all elections," laments Shivakumar , a petty shopowner in Guluru village .
Besides debating the pros and cons of the bypoll, many farmers who have no work in the fields owing to the drought, have become part-time party workers, helping both the BJP and Congress campaign for their respective candidates for a sum of Rs 500 a day.
And with villagers also making their way in groups to the Congress and BJP offices in Nanjangud town to talk about various issues, the parties have begun serving them free lunches in the run-up to the poll that has been dominating their lives for the last few weeks.
