Betting on Bengaluru

BENGALURU MAY BE in the grip of a heat wave, but the electioneering here appeared lukewarm until almost the last leg. Days before half of Karnataka’s 28 Lok Sabha seats went to polls, Home Minister Amit Shah, on April 23, conducted a 45-minute roadshow in Bangalore South, accompanied by Tejasvi Surya, seeking a second term from the constituency, veteran leaders BS Yediyurappa, R Ashoka and others. While popular, Surya faces a spirited fight from Congress’ Sowmya Reddy, former Jayanagar MLA and daughter of state Transport Minister Ramalinga Reddy. With 2.2 million voters, the constituency has consistently voted BJP in the past eight Lok Sabha elections. The constituency has a large Brahmin popula­tion and was successfully represented by the late Ananth Kumar for six consecutive terms. Now, Congress is making a bid to wrest the seat by fielding a woman. “Women voters are with us this time and Sowmya is going to spring a surprise with a big victory margin,” claims her father Ramalinga Reddy.

About the same time that Shah was waving to massive crowds at Swami Vivekananda Circle, Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, at a public meeting attended by Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar and party seniors, accused BJP of being oblivi­ous to the problems of women. She touched on Congress’ social guarantees—including free bus travel for women and ₹1,000 a month to women heads of households—implemented in the state after the party secured a comprehensive victory in the As­sembly election last year, and elaborated on the schemes in the party manifesto for the Lok Sabha polls. Congress has promised 50 per cent reservation in government jobs for women and an an­nual grant of ₹1 lakh to poor women. The party’s pledge to build an equal-opportunity economy has been interpreted by BJP as a mission to redistribute wealth among certain sections of society. While Congress has vehemently denied the allegations, many middle-class voters in Bengaluru disapprove of the high cost of the party’s social guarantees and say development has taken a back seat. “An easier commute is one thing women professionals like me will vote for, and I am disappointed that the Bengaluru Suburban Rail Project, which could take a million commuters off the roads, is proceeding very slowly, with the state and the Centre taking turns to blame each other. Clearly, it is not a priority for the sitting BJP MPs in the city,” says R Kalyanavasantha, a 36-year-old game designer from affluent Basavanagudi in south Bengaluru. On April 22, Surya, campaigning with Tamil Nadu BJP President K Annamalai in Jayanagar, assured voters that the Ministry of Railways was trying to expedite the project.

Of the 14 constituencies in Karnataka that will vote on April 26, Bangalore North, Bangalore South, Bangalore Central and Bangalore Rural fall in the capital region. Three of them, with the exception of Bangalore Rural, held by Congress’ DK Suresh, are with BJP. All three are considered ‘safe’ seats for the saffron party, but Congress leaders say their party is done playing defence. “Bengaluru typically elects almost the same number of MLAs from BJP and Congress, and this is what happened in the 2023 elections, too, so there is no reason the odds should be against us in the Lok Sabha polls. We have revisited our strategies for seats in the Bengaluru region this time, and we are sure we will break into what BJP claims as its fortresses,” says Ramalinga Reddy, adding that a drive to get more people to vote is expected to yield results for Congress. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, Bangalore South recorded the lowest voter turnout in the state at 53.48 per cent. With the poll date falling on a Friday this time, the tech crowd may well utilise the long weekend for a break outside town.

While Congress has been focusing on local issues, the state government’s mishandling of the water crisis and alleged water-for-vote politics could be a major hurdle for the party. Vruksha Shankar, a 42-year-old product manager with an ITeS company in south Bengaluru, is determined to vote against Congress for leaving the people of the city “high and dry”. “They seized all the tankers, knowing well that there was no water in our borewells. In our apartment complex, residents were forced to use paper plates and cups. There were days we ordered Swiggy because buying water for cooking was so tedious. The stores near­by were running out of water cans,” says Shankar, who lives with her husband and two sons in an upscale apartment community on Kanakapura Road where a three-bedroom flat costs upwards of ₹3.5 crore. “We voted for Congress in the Assembly polls and the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, but they have let people down in the worst ways.” Kanakapura, represented by DK Shivakumar, is one of eight Assembly segments in Bangalore Rural Lok Sabha constituency. The parliamentary constituency is witnessing a faceoff between his brother DK Suresh, the lone Congress MP from Karnataka, and BJP’s Dr CN Manjunath, a respected cardi­ologist and son-in-law of Janata Dal (Secular) patriarch HD Deve Gowda, with the state’s two prominent Vokkaliga families lock­ing horns over the seat. “I think there is a great opportunity for me to bring the change that people want. I am a professional and I hope people will trust me to work systematically to find solutions for Bengaluru’s problems—from water, roads and health to lake revival and habitat restoration. In the rural segments of the con­stituency, people trust JD(S) with addressing their concerns and I will have to live up to their expectations,” says Dr Manjunath.

“Be it agriculture or infrastructure, Congress has cut down the budgetary allocation. Their focus is only on corruption and not on Bengaluru people’s concerns. Only the projects of the Central government are progressing rapidly in Karnataka,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, addressing a public meeting at Palace Grounds on April 21. He accused Congress of turning India’s IT city into a ‘tanker city’ and appealed to voters to support a tech-friendly party, in a message that seemed to resonate with Bengaluru’s tech work­ers. “We want Modi to come back at the Centre,” says Avinash Kollur, a 32-year-old software devel­oper with a startup in Yeshvanthapura, north Ben­galuru. “Modi’s digital push is what has given our industry the confidence to build tech products for the future. Congress is just a status-quo party as far as the tech industry is concerned.”

Just as BJP, keen to win Bangalore Rural, is focused on urban segments like Kanakapura and Anekal (SC) that are trending in favour of Suresh, Congress, too, is hoping for a reversal of fortunes in Bangalore North, the second-largest Lok Sabha constituency in India. A former Congress stronghold, it was captured by BJP in 2014 and hasn’t changed hands since. “I am the only one who can win this seat for Congress,” says MV Rajeev Gowda, the Congress candidate who is up against BJP’s feisty Shobha Karandlaje. A former Rajya Sabha MP, Gowda, 60, was a professor of econom­ics and social sciences and the chairperson of the Centre for Public Policy at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. Looking weather-worn in a blue khadi shirt after winding up a campaign in a low-income Tamil neighbourhood in Pu­lakeshinagar, Gowda says Congress has many positives going for it, including “the impact of Congress’ guarantees, BJP’s corruption and com­munal agenda, the injustice done to Karnataka in the devolution of taxes, and Congress’ track record of being an effective problem-solver—of issues like water and traffic”. He says this is a potentially winnable seat, but adds that a successful candidate needs cross-party appeal which can boost the tradi­tional Congress vote. “I hope that the large tech workforce in the constituency will value a former professor trying to make an im­pact,” Gowda says. Billed as a Vokkaliga constituency, Bangalore North is as diverse as it gets, encompassing Brahmin-dominated neighbourhoods like Malleshwaram—Gowda grew up there— and the reserved (SC) constituency of Pulakeshinagar. With five MLAs against Congress’ three, the arithmetic in Bangalore North may seem to favour the BJP-JD(S) combine, but Gowda says the two sides are equally matched. “The Yeshvanthapura MLA, ST Somashekhar, was elected from BJP but he is working with us now. Add to this the fact that Karandlaje is a reject from Udupi- Chikmagalur and we should be on safe ground.”

“Whoever wins, I hope they put an end to the political apathy we Dalits of Pulakeshinagar face,” says 46-year-old S Parthiban, a local Dalit leader who runs an egg business. He stands in front of a line of stores-on-wheels that he funded himself. “Every succes­sive government threatens us with eviction and we have to fight every day for our bread and butter. There is no water, no drainage in our slums and no safety for women. We have always backed Congress, but they too have turned a blind eye to our problems.” Government schemes haven’t reached a big chunk of the voters here, claims Parthiban.

In Sunkadakatte, Chandramma, a 52-year-old who runs a tiffin centre, blames BJP for rampant inflation. “Dal is selling for over ₹200 and ragi has touched ₹45. In my 15 years running a business, this is the first time I have had to pledge my gold bangles. Can free bus rides and ₹1,000 a month cancel out the impact of inflation?” she asks. She haggles with a banana leaves vendor, whose ask­ing price is ₹20 per leaf. “I cannot afford to buy 200 leaves. We are just getting poorer,” she says. But S Hemanth, 39, a co-owner of a used car dealership in Sunkadakatte, says that Modi is good for business. “The only suggestion I have is that the government in­troduce Mudra loans for value-added businesses like ours. Banks don’t give us loans and private finance companies charge 16-18 per cent interest, eating into our profits,” he says.

Across town, in Agrahara Dasarahalli on Magadi Road which falls under Bangalore South, M Kempegowda, a 55-year-old auto driver, says Congress’ policies have cost him his livelihood. “CNG prices have shot up even as bus travel has been made free for women. Driving an auto is no longer profitable,” he says. He hopes Congress will stand by its promise of waiving student loans. His younger son, pursuing an MBA, has a ₹3 lakh loan against his name. “I do not like religion-politics but when religion comes spiked with some development, I’ll take it over appeasement politics.”

“Almost all of Congress’ schemes are useless. They are a distraction from the reality of zero-development,” says Theertha Vasanth, 37, who runs a sugarcane juice centre in Raja­rajeshwari Nagar, which falls under the Bangalore Rural constitu­ency. On summer mornings, a truck laden with sugarcane from Mandya arrives at her shop, to be pressed into delicious sweet nectar that the bees cannot seem to get enough of. “The law and order situation is not good. Women here fear anti-social elements and the Congress government has taken no action against them despite representations made by the BJP MLA Munirathna Naidu on our behalf,” she says. Back home in Mandya, the sentiment is pro-JD(S), she says. “This is Kumaranna’s [JD-S state President HD Kumaraswamy] do-or-die battle and everyone is with him,” she says, referring to the high-profile contest between Kumaraswamy and Congress’ Venkataramane Gowda, the wealthiest candidate contesting in Phase 2 of the Lok Sabha polls. Kumaraswamy has said that he is contesting to ensure Congress cannot “finish off” JD(S). The Cauvery water crisis has led to lower yields in the state’s sugarcane belt, at 520 lakh tonnes this year against last year’s 750 lakh tonnes. “NDA is poised to make gains in southern Karnataka, especially the old Mysore belt,” says Dr Manjunath.

In Bangalore Central, which includes the 4.5 lakh-plus voters of Mahadevapura, the water crisis has hit the hardest, and this may reflect in how the constituency votes this time. Property taxes from this residential zone crossed the ₹1,000-crore mark this year, but the area remains plagued by severe water scarcity and notoriously bad roads and public infrastructure. BJP’s PC Mohan, seeking a fourth term as MP, is battling anti-incumbency in the heart of Bengaluru. He is up against Congress debutante Man­soor Ali Khan in a constituency where BJP dominates the two SC Assembly segments (Mahadevapura and CV Raman Nagar), with Congress having an edge in the remaining segments where Muslims are present in large numbers. With Muslims consti­tuting 17 per cent of the population in Bangalore Central, and SCs a close second at 16 per cent, which way the verdict swings is anyone’s guess.

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