As usual I got up at 5. 30 this morning, had a glass of lukewarm water with a pinch of turmeric, finished the morning ablutions, got ready with my walking outfit and opened the eastern door of my house at around 6.15. By George, what a feast to my eyes, a dawn of a different kind with the eastern horizon awash with a new glow. The rising red sun as we usually see during this season was not visible, but the skyline was a milk white spread, gilded with the soft, gentle rays of the sun. The black blobs of clouds ringed with silver on the edge that remained static despite the gentle breeze above the earth, was a sight for Gods to see. And for a mortal like me it came free! Somehow, intuitively, one sentence from the National song Vande Mataram came to my mind “Shubhrajyotsnaa pulakitayaaminii” (a happy beautiful woman in clear moonlight). I felt so much exhilarated that for a moment I thought I was not looking at the space, but at the sublimated beauty of a Yamini.

The nature’s metamorphosis in this way was apparently due to unexpected but welcome summer rains our city had last evening.

While as a journalist - writer and also as an aesthete, I might have looked at the eastern skyline early this morning the way I described above, our Chief Minister B. S. Yeddyurappa might have looked at the same skyline (if at all he had time) from a totally different perspective.

His perspective would be far removed from mine and probably be mundane. After all, he is at present the most harassed Chief Minister for the reason of shortage of electricity in the State. Without rains, he will be a doomed Chief Minister, specially this year, as he will not be able to provide not only electricity to people but also drinking water.

Yesterday’s rains must have brought some relief to him and hope that summer rains will bless him in time and in right volume to ease the situation regarding electricity and water.

With the Parliament elections at the threshold, the Chief Minister has hardly any time to handle the situation. In fact, it is not the time for him to handle the situation by bluffing the people or holding negotiations with private and government power generating agencies either in our State or outside. It is the time for him to simply deliver both electricity and water to the voters. Let me not say, the people.

If the Chief Minister fails, people will certainly ask him: How is it that during the period of H. D. Kumaraswamy and N. Dharam Singh these problems were not as grave as they are now?

Certainly, Yeddyurappa cannot convince the voters by saying that because of the wrong policies pursued by the previous governments we have the present problems. Even assuming that there is some truth in what Yeddyurappa is saying, as the Chief Minister it is his responsibility to solve the problem no matter at what cost and by what means. During the election period the game of passing the blame on a government that was will cut no ice. It is the right time for the BJP government in Karnataka to remember what happened in Delhi about 12 years ago when the incumbent BJP government was thrown out for the reason it could not provide onions on the dining tables of the voters.

Gone are the days when patriotic citizens voted in the name of Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, Subhash Chandra Bose and their policies and principles. For today’s voter, patriotism or principles of economics, social justice and national security are passing. For him, the annadhata is the best bet. He who provides him with roti, kapda, makan and bijili, pani, sadak, is the right person to deserve his vote. Yet, there is a catch in this supposition. A voter may yet ignore a candidate or a party which promises all his personal needs mentioned above and as a contingency personal plan will vote for a candidate who belongs to his caste or religion or one who is likely to favour him at a future date when need arises. L. K. Advani, the BJP’s and NDA’s Prime Ministerial candidate, has given a classic example of this in his highly readable and educative autobiography, “My Country, My Life”.

It appears, shortly after the 1957 Parliament elections, an Assembly by election took place in the Kotputli constituency, near Jaipur, Rajasthan. Advani was at that time working as RSS Pracharak and in view of this election, he was entrusted with the responsibility of managing the election campaign. Poor Advani worked hard and prepared some literature explaining how his party, Jana Sangh, would try to solve these problems if people voted for the Jana Sangh candidate Ram Karan Singh.

A month before the polling, the young Advani went to Kotputli from Jaipur, where he got all the literature printed, and began unloading the poll literature. The candidate Ram Karan Singh was, of course, there standing at a distance and watching the enthusiastic RSS Pracharak Advani rather bemusedly. He then asked Advani: "Advaniji, would you like me and my workers to distribute the literatures in the constituency?"

The candidate Ram Karan Singh told Advani there was absolutely no need for it. "This manifesto and these pamphlets are totally useless in our election strategy. We might spend some time, energy and money distributing them but that will not fetch us even a single additional vote," the candidate told Advani.

The candidate then assured Advani that none of his rival candidates could defeat him in that particular election because it was predominantly a Gujar constituency and Ram Karan Singh was the only Gujar in that contest.

Now it simply speaks of the importance of caste factor in elections which is true even today as it was in 1957. However, regardless of the importance of caste in election, the “bread and butter” factor also has become relevant in the present context, especially when there are too many players in an election.

We are already seeing the formation of a Third Front which simply cannot be wished away like a bubble that will burst as BJP has said. However, BJP must remember that its erstwhile partners in NDA, Telugu Desam Party and AIADMK are now in the Third Front.

In the meanwhile, this Third Front cannot be ignored as irrelevant as per the opinion of the Congress. The Third Front is bound to take away not only some of the votes but also seats of BJP and the Congress for the reason that the Third Front is a combination of Regional, Left, Democratic and Secular forces. The alarm bells are already deafening the ears of the voters but it doesn’t seem to have touched the ears of the BJP Chief Minister in Karnataka.

Unless the BJP government in the State dispels the ever - increasing hours of darkness in every voter’s home, there is a danger that the BJP in Karnataka will settle for far less than 22 Parliamentary seats that was optimistically predicted by Yeddyurappa.

Jai ho Democracy.

PS:
Yeddyurappa would do well to pray for copious rains whenever he visits temples instead of praying for election victory. With rains he is bound to get more votes as there will be no power shortage.