Bengaluru: The Siddaramaiah-led Congress government in Karnataka completed 100 days in office Monday. Siddaramaiah had taken oath on 20 May, after the Congress defeated the then-incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in the state in assembly elections held that month.
But a hundred days on, while the Congress government in Karnataka is perceived to have made a start on delivering on the “five guarantees” it had made in its poll manifesto, it seems to be purportedly lagging behind on “undoing” the BJP policies it had targeted in the run-up to the elections, political observers and experts ThePrint spoke to said.
In its very first cabinet decision made by the Siddaramaiah government on 20 May, it had given in-principle approval to the “five guarantees” which are believed to have helped it sweep the 10 May elections.
The Congress had guaranteed five social welfare schemes in its poll manifesto which it had said it would implement if voted to power. These included ‘Gruha Jyothi’ — to provide 200 units of electricity free to every household in the state; ‘Gruha Lakshmi’ — to grant Rs 2,000 to every woman head of every below poverty line (BPL), above poverty line (APL, but the woman or her husband should not be paying income tax or filing GST to be eligible for benefit under this scheme) and Antyodaya card-holding (a food security scheme of the Central government) family; ‘Anna Bhagya’ — to distribute 10 kg rice to every member of below poverty level families every month; ‘Yuva Nidhi’ — to sanction Rs 3,000 dole to unemployed graduates and Rs 1,500 to unemployed diploma holders for two years (in the 18-25 age-group); and ‘Shakti’ — to enable free travel for women across Karnataka in state buses.
These have remained the primary focus of the Siddaramaiah government, said political observers and analysts ThePrint spoke to.
“The entire focus has been with the guarantee programme and [the government] has not wavered in it. But one thing is that they should be a little more assertive on how they are going to mobilise resources for financing them,” A. Narayana, political analyst and faculty at the Azim Premji University, told ThePrint.
Siddaramaiah, in his budget speech, had estimated that implementing the schemes would cost the state Rs 52,000 crore annually, but commented that it would mean that “we will be providing on average additional financial assistance of Rs 4,000 to Rs 5,000 monthly to each eligible household, which is about Rs 48,000 to Rs 60,000 every year”.
But while government officials and a section of the Congress party voiced concerns over whether the implementation of the scheme would derail, or at the very least temporarily stall, the state’s growth rate, the issue of welfare schemes have also caused discord in the ruling party, according to political observers and analysts, with newly-elected MLAs demanding funds for public works in their constituencies in the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Dissatisfaction among MLAs forced the CM to call for a legislature party meeting on 27 July to assuage rising tempers.
A letter, purportedly written by Congress legislator B.S. Patil and doing the rounds of social media in the third week of July, claimed that several MLAs were unhappy as no funds had been released for developmental works in their respective constituencies. Multiple Congress leaders who spoke to ThePrint said that the CM had assured to address the legislators’ grievances and even asked them to make their demands in public.
Meanwhile, the opposition BJP has begun its attack on the Siddaramaiah government, accusing it of stopping all development works in the state.
The 100-day-old government has also been under scrutiny for its other pre-poll promise of “undoing the wrongs” of the BJP government,
While Karnataka Primary and Secondary Education Minister Madhu Bangarappa has said that school textbooks in the state would be revised, to undo alleged “saffronisation by the previous governments — and the state earlier this month decided to scrap the implementation of the Modi government’s National Education Policy 2020 in Karnataka — it is yet to bring up the other changes it had promised ahead of elections, said political observers.
Among the things it had spoken of was a “ban” on organisations “promoting enmity or hatred, whether among majority or minority communities”; restoration of the four percent reservation for Muslims under the other backward classes (OBC) category scrapped by the previous Basavraj Bommai government; release the results of a 2015 socio-economic caste census conducted by the then Siddaramaiah government and undoing the school textbook changes brought in by the BJP.
“That (scrapping policies of the BJP) would be done quietly later. They (Congress) don’t want to make that the centerpiece of their politics,” Narendar Pani, a Bengaluru-based political analyst and faculty at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), told ThePrint.
Added Narayana: “One cannot expect Siddaramaiah to be as independent and as assertive as he was in 2013. In 2013, he was the lone person. Now he got the seat after so much haggling. The very fact that he became CM was an act of compromise.”
The political analyst was referring to the national leadership of the Congress taking an entire week to decide that Siddaramaiah would be CM, after Shivakumar too staked claim for the top post.
‘Welfare-model of development’
Talking about the estimated toll on the government exchequer owing to the implementation of the new schemes, Krishna Byre Gowda, Karnataka’s revenue minister and its representative in the GST council, said, “One hundred percent we are very sure that the revenue deficit is only for this year. This will not be the new norm. We are absolutely certain that this is only a transitory arrangement for this year.”
While presenting the new government’s budget for the current fiscal last month, Siddaramaiah said total revenue earnings were estimated to be Rs 2,38,409.81 crore, while total expenditure was estimated to be Rs 2,50,932 crore — showing a deficit of Rs. 12,523 crore.
As MLAs demand release of funds to start work in their constituencies, officials told ThePrint on condition of anonymity that the government had little funds for starting any new programmes before 2024 and capital expenditure has been low.
According to a senior official in the Karnataka government there was a difference of Rs 6,000-7,000 crore in capital expenditure in the state in the first quarter of the new fiscal (2023-24) as against that in the corresponding quarter last year. Capital expenditure (or CapEx) are funds used to acquire, upgrade and maintain physical assets.
“But it would be unfair to compare [the two] as in the last year there were bulk provisions, like the Upper Bhadra Project [an irrigation scheme] among others,” the official said. Also, while the Model Code of Conduct for the May election came into effect on 30 March, putting a stop on fresh investments, the new government was sworn in only on 20 May.
ThePrint reached the finance department for comment on the purported reduced capital expenditure and growth concerns, but received no response till the time of publication of this report.
However, Siddaramaah in his budget speech had alleged that the condition of the state’s economy deteriorated during the previous [BJP] government, and that Karnataka’s gross state domestic product (GSDP) (at constant prices), was estimated to grow at 7.9 percent in 2022-23 as against 11 percent in the previous fiscal.
He had added that the capital outlay for 2023-24 was proposed to be Rs 50,989 crore, a decrease of three percent from the revised estimate of 2022-23. The cost of funding the five guarantees is likely to add to the growing liabilities of the state, estimated to be Rs 5.65 lakh crore in 2023-24.
Meanwhile, Deputy CM, DK Shivakumar said on 26 July that “This year, we [the government] can’t provide development”. Though Shivakumar was responding to questions on funds for public works, others in the Congress have talked about the guarantees as essential “social and economic development”.
“The Congress as a party comes together only under the heat of an election. Not before or after. So, we don’t see the government talking in a coherent voice. Be it on the programmes or on the secular credentials. So, you have none other than the deputy CM said that for a year don’t think of any development. But what they are arguing elsewhere is that this (guarantees) is our welfare-oriented model of development which is the Karnataka model of development,” Narayana added.
Shivakumar’s statement also gave the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Janata Dal (Secular) ammunition to attack the government.
“In the name of guarantees, all development works have been stopped,” Basavaraj Bommai, the former chief minister and BJP leader, said in a statement to the media Monday. He also alleged that the Congress government had become synonymous with corruption, claiming money was being demanded for the transfer of government officials and as bribes to clear pending bills of contractors.
“Amid all this, Rs 11,000 crore meant for the development of Scheduled Castes and Schedule Tribes have been diverted to fulfill the guarantees and cheat people from backward and marginalised classes,” Bommai alleged.
‘Legacy politics’
The state government announced earlier this month that it will repeal the implementation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 in Karnataka and draft one of its own.
The state, under Bommai, had been among the first to implement the NEP.
The Siddaramaiah government has also said that it will remove references to any Hindutva ideologues in school textbooks that were implemented by the earlier BJP government.
But the government has been as yet been cautious not to undo some of the other laws brought in by the previous BJP government, such as the anti-cattle slaughter law and anti-religious conversion law.
It is also yet to make public the findings of a 2015 caste census, commissioned by the then Siddaramaiag government, which has been perceived as fear of offending dominant communities like Lingayats and Vokkaligas.
With the 2024 Lok Sabha elections also around the corner, analysts say that the government will tread cautiously so as to ensure that it does not antagonise any community nor lose the momentum in its fight against the BJP.
“All second-term politicians are, like the US term, now into legacy politics. He is more interested in what he will leave behind..what he will be remembered for,” said another Bengaluru-based analyst, requesting anonymity.
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)