The privatisation of patronage

As the endgame begins for B.S. Yeddyurappa in the Karnataka BJP, a look at the political culture he created and was also nurtured by

As B.S. Yeddyurappa moves into the endgame of his battle from within the BJP, the focus will be, among other things, on the damage he can cause his former colleagues in the party. While that will no doubt make for interesting reading, the more serious concern should be the damage his brand of politics has caused Karnataka. And high on this list would be the effects the political change he led has had on Bangalore.

Yeddyurappa's politics in recent years has been built around two longer-term trends in Karnataka: decentralisation and privatisation of patronage. The state has been a pioneer in decentralisation, with the process gaining momentum in the 1980s, well before the constitutional amendments of 1992. This process created the platform for a number of aspiring, and often ruthlessly ambitious, local politicians.

In the early years of this decentralisation, these politicians grew under the umbrella of state-level leaders belonging to one national party or the other. They provided the grassroots network for state patronage provided by the ruling party. But as the competition among these grassroots politicians grew, it was not possible for any party to absorb all of them. Those who failed to get into the networks of state-level leaders had to find their own resources to provide patronage to their constituents.

With the Reddy brothers in Bellary showing the way, these aspiring local politicians chose to privatise state resources they came into contact with, beginning with government transport and going up to the funds for state schemes. These methods were necessarily illegal, but that was not a deterrent. By the turn of the century, the number of corrupt local leaders was so large that they could not all be accommodated in the Congress and the Janata Dal.

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