Bengaluru: Karnataka Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar has spent the better part of the last three months announcing new schemes, policies and projects, greenlighting proposals at frequent intervals. Political watchers say this reflects the pressure to counter the previous administration’s perception of policy paralysis and lack of development. The Shivakumar government has now completed 100 days.
On Wednesday, Shivakumar’s Cabinet took up—and approved—nearly 45 subjects, including several important ones, that would otherwise take months of deliberation. “He took up the mantle with barely two years to go. So every day, week and month…he has to show something to the people as if it is a 100-day milestone every day,” A. Narayana, a Bengaluru-based political analyst and faculty member at Azim Premji University, told ThePrint.
Analysts add that the pace of Shivakumar’s approvals in the first 100 days in office are unlikely to be perceived as progress, but perhaps a possible path toward it. In just the last week, Shivakumar and his team carefully prepared several presentations highlighting achievements and outlining goals for the remainder of his term.
On Thursday, he unveiled Maha Sankalpa and Nava Sakalpa, a grand vision for 2037. Maha Sankalpa includes transforming Karnataka into a $1-trillion economy, reducing poverty and school dropout rates to zero, and bringing malnutrition below 5 percent. Under Nava Sankalpa, the chief minister underlined health, education, and water security projects like Mekedatu-Ettinahole.
“The goal is to invest Rs 1.5 lakh crore in infrastructure over the next 500 days and attract ₹3 lakh crore in new investments,” Shivakumar said Thursday.
Since taking office on 3 June this year, the chief minister has pressed big ticket projects like the Tunnel Road, flyovers in Bengaluru, completing the Mekedatu and Yetthinahole irrigation projects, building Bharat Jodo youth associations and other initiatives that would take years to even commence, let alone complete. “Whatever I have announced is all with consideration of financial constraints as well as those that can be implemented or else I will become a fool in front of the people,” he said at a media interaction late Wednesday.
Shivakumar’s Sankalpa is eerily similar to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Viksit Bharat 2047’, an initiative that the Congress has relentlessly critiqued for prioritising long-term goals over immediate needs.
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‘Guarantees were my idea’
On Tuesday, Shivakumar made a surprise visit to an Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) yard at Yeshwantpura in north Bengaluru. His media team scrambled to get everything in order, while the CM went around speaking to farmers, workers and others in the yard, interacting with various sections during their busiest hours.
Shivakumar climbed onto weighing scales to check their authenticity and even shared a meal with workers present there. His interactions with an elderly woman worker made headlines and the video has since gone viral on social media.
Unaware of who Shivakumar was, the woman was asked if she was receiving monetary benefits under the Gruha Lakshmi scheme. She replied that she was not but mentioned that she was availing the free public transport under the Shakthi scheme. When Shivakumar asked who gave her all these benefits, the woman innocently replied, “Siddaramaiah.”
Shivakumar’s predecessor announced all five guarantees on the day he became chief minister in May 2023, becoming the face of the welfare schemes. “Other than Anna Bhagya, all other schemes were conjured up by me,” Shivakumar said at the dinner meeting Wednesday.
Congress leaders candidly admit that the guarantees were its trump card which they exhausted on Day 1 of their administration, leaving little for the remainder of the five-year-term.
Shivakumar is also under immense pressure, analysts and political leaders say, to show something beyond guarantees. The chief minister has since announced public outreach measures like ‘Praja Seva’, promised to take a more consultative approach while deciding on key legislations, reforms to examination committees, restructuring the state public service commission and filling up all vacancies in the government.
But his eagerness to show performance has been countered with multiple setbacks. His Cabinet colleague B. Nagendra was forced to step down over corruption allegations, the contentious parks bill was withdrawn, the caste census remains undisclosed and the party’s core support base, women, are still dismayed at the lack of female presence in his 33-member Cabinet.
“Not to say that the previous government was bad, but the initial euphoria of Shivakumar who is seen as a taskmaster and troubleshooter, taking over as CM is slowly fading away. His setbacks, rumblings in his party since he assumed office… are reversing the initial goodwill and inertia and generated perception that this is a continuation of the previous government,” Narayana said.
‘Up till 4 am’
Ministers, party colleagues and others say that Shivakumar has been overworking himself to a point of exhaustion. “I have not slept for six continuous hours since becoming chief minister,” Shivakumar said. His colleagues say that the chief minister meets people till about 3-4 am every day and is up and about by no later than 8 am.
Shivakumar looks visibly exhausted, rarely smiles and perhaps is not in the pink of his health. “He has an idea about everything. He wants to do everything himself,” says a Cabinet colleague on condition of anonymity.
Shivakumar makes no secret of his grand plans either, even at the risk of being seen as taking decisions unilaterally. After resistance from his own Cabinet colleagues over certain decisions, Shivakumar has announced the formation of a ‘Group of Ministers’ who will review important subjects before they are placed before the Cabinet.
But these reforms, analysts say, are not enough to convince people of performance. “With Siddaramaiah, you know his platform is social justice, fight for the oppressed and others. With Shivakumar there is no set platform and this makes the direction in which he is going unclear,” Narendar Pani, Bengaluru-based political analyst and faculty member at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, told ThePrint.
Pani and other analysts say that it would be unfair to ‘judge’ Shivakumar on his performance in the first 100 days but the expectation is that he would indicate a clear direction of where he is headed. With just a little over a year left for the election cycle to kick in, this, analysts say, should be his biggest priority.
(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)
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