Karnataka polls: Party-hopping matters little in Aland

The Mumbai-Hyderabad highway has become an unmoving mass of crowded buses and jeeps, lorries with drowsy drivers and impatient cars and bikes. Commuters — families with bewildered children and the elderly — beetle around this to find a way out and walk home, heads covered against the 400C sun.

Aland’s sitting MLA and the Congress candidate for the upcoming polls B R Patil is filing his nomination this day, on April 23, and his supporters have arrived in hordes. Young boys walk around distributing water bottles and one even holding up a broken, but, running fan to cool listless women in shiny sarees, who are riding jeeps to the venue.

Patil is contesting against BJP’s Subhash Guttedar. Both hopefuls have hopped parties multiple times — Patil with Janata Party, JD, JD(U), JD(S), KJP, and now INC, and Guttedar with KCP, JD(S), INC, and now BJP.

Kodalhangarka, an Aland village about a kilometre off the highway, is largely empty. “All of them have left for Patil’s function,” says Sambu Korale, a landowner who has his own tractor. He is relatively better off and can afford to stay away from such political exhibitions.

Others like Pramiti (name changed) say that most families are forced to send a representative. “They come around in the village and ask us why we are here and not there,” she says. She has just returned from the venue with her grandson, who is still wearing a cap with the Congress symbol.

Siddaram Gursham Kambar, a tile maestry who works in Pune, did not go. He has little affection for the leaders or this village, which he had to leave 30 years ago because there were no jobs here. “It is still bad,” he says, “There are no jobs and the people here are not right”. Payment for any work done comes 8 or 10 days late, he says. He and his wife Channamma can do little to protest. They live in a separate lane, along with people of their caste, away from the more privileged castes. “In cities, everyone lives together,” she says, “not here”.

Chatura Bai, sitting in front of the departmental store she and her three sons own, lives in the other side of the village. But too curses and spits loudly at the mention of elections. “I applied for the toilet at the local panchayat three times, nothing came of it,” she says. But she will vote, she says. “It is my duty and I will do it till I am laid to rest into the earth”.

A noble-sounding sentiment, except another villager says that if you do not vote, you stand the chance of being denied your rations.

This person does not elaborate how this could happen, but there is a pervading fear that without voting you could cease to exist and with that your rights would cease too. Chatura Bai’s sons join the conversation and so does their friend Appu Koralli. Appu has just been to Patil’s nomination. He supports and works for the Congress candidate this state election, but in the MP election a few years ago, he was working for BJP. “I work for the individual and not the party,” he says.

Appu does not think that he is working for conflicting political ideologies, he is instead working for a leader that could help him in his work in the village. His childhood friend and Chatura Bai’s son, Sanju Sakarma, teases him for his fickleness and insists that Appu’s name be put down as Kashinath Koralli. “He was named after his grandfather and Appu is a name we gave him,” says Sanju. He may not understand Appu’s need to give a snappier sounding name, but understands his friend’s politics. There are only two parties here, Sanju says, “They are Patil’s and Guttedar’s”.

Mahasabhas to bring in voters

In Jidga village, Sreenath Lavani has recently come from Pune to vote and his loyalties are clearly with BJP. “There are no jobs in Aland. Where are the industries?” he asks. He believes that Subash Guttedar, “a good person who will win on any ticket”, and BJP’s political leadership will transform his village. Aland does see large-scale migration to Pune and Mumbai for jobs. This election, parties had organised ‘mahasabhas’ or big gatherings to encourage voters to come back to their village to vote.

“Their daily wages of `350 to `400 and ticket charges are paid,” says a party worker. “In villages, voters don’t get paid in thousands, like in the cities,” says worker of a rival party. Basavaraj is a supporter of Guttedar too. “He helped when my brothers had to be educated and when one of them had to be married. He organises mass weddings for 101 couples, who cannot afford it otherwise,” he says. He says Guttedar has promised him help whenever needed. He too has travelled from Mumbai where he works in a company after passing his BCom.