Month: May 2008

Ministry Formation – Comments

Earlier today, I wrote about some theoretical aspects regarding ministry formation – talking about incentivising, regional/community balance, etc. Here are some pertinent observations about the ministry itself.

  • There have been some rumblings about three leaders from Bellary (two Reddy brothers and Sriramulu) who have less than ten years in the party have been accommodated. My argument is that these guys have built up a whole base for the party from scratch. Bellary was a zero district for the BJP till 1999, when Sonia contested from there. From that kind of a situation to practically sweeping the state does take some kind of effort. Apart from Bellary, the trio are supposed to have been a big factor in the Gadag sweep too. I think the reward is fair. The only thing is that these guys should be kept far away from the Mines and Geology portfolio – so that there is no conflict of interest.
  • A number of districts have gone without representation, including a number of strong BJP districts – as I’d pointed out earlier today. Shankar Linge Gowda (4 time MLA from one of the Mysore constituencies) definitely deserved a berth, as did of course Jagdish Shettar. Nothing can be helped about some 5 districts in South Karnataka where the BJP didn’t open its account. But all other districts need their share. Bidar was supposed to be represented by Basavaraj Patil Attur, but somehow he disappeared at the last minute. Also, there is no representative from Mainland Tumkur (the only representative of the district is an independent from Pavagada, which is just an island surrounded by Andhra on all sides).
  • Apart from Shankar Linge Gowda and Jagadish Shettar, a number of other three and four-time winners have been denied, whose supporters have promptly rioted. There is A Narayanswamy of Anekal and Yogish Bhat of Mangalore South. There is also Appachu Ranjan of Coorg. The last named was probably left out since Coorg contributes just two seats. Yogish Bhat and Narayanswamy lost out in the caste calculations, I think. Narayanswamy was also not helped by the fact that he’s from Bangalore
  • Most of the independents supporting the BJP are SC/STs. This has crowded out SC/STs from the party. They have still given ministries to three SCs (Limbavali, Karjol, Revu Naik) and one ST (Sriramulu) but people, especially Narayanswamy, are not happy. The BJP has worked hard to gain acceptance among these communities. It should be careful not to lose it all now.
  • Bangalore has 6 people in the ministry. And there’s Katta Subramanya Naidu who is yet to join. One reason why Bangalore numbers look bloated is because two MLAs from here – Arvind Limbavali and Shobha Karandlaje – are not natives of the city, and have moved here only for elections. Again, because of this, other local Bangalore? guys have got crowded out. However, the presence of a number of first time MLAs from helps – they need not be given anything just yet.
  • Another problem with the BJP is that the community composition of its top leadership doesn’t reflect the community composition of the state – they have too many Brahmins and Lingayats. Hence, they won’t be able to follow the strict community quota rules that the Krishna and Deve Gowda governments followed.
  • The new real estate lobby that has been instrumental in these elections hasn’t got anything in terms of ministry (I’m talking mainly about Kote Nandish Reddy (K R Puram) and Satish Reddy (Bommanahalli) here).
  • The BJP is lucky that some new entrants such as G T Deve Gowda and Benki Mahadevu lost, else they would’ve been sure shots for ministries. That would’ve taken the number of new entrants to an unacceptable level – from the point of motivating the cadres.

Anyways, let’s hope that the government somehow survives and lasts its full term. There are a large number of challenges ahead of it, so hopefully they should be able to get over their differences quickly and get down to work.

Ministry Formation – my theory

So Yeddyurappa has been finally sworn in as the CM of Karnataka, this time hopefully for a longer period. Some 29 people have already been sworn in with him, leaving just four more slots (there is a limit of 34 on the size of the ministry). Trouble has already started brewing as some senior leaders and long-term MLAs (such as Jagadish Shetter, Shankar Linge Gowda and A Narayanaswamy (Anekal) ) haven’t been accommodated in the ministry. There are reported to have been protests all over the state yesterday regarding this.

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Death Markets

I wrote this in a mail to the Satin group. This was in response to a mail by Amit Varma talking about priests in Haridwar who conduct the pre-ashes-dunking ceremony, and their fees, and the bargaining, and what could be a decent solution for the problem. I thought it might make sense as a standalone post, so I’m reproducing it here.

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Public enemy number one theory for Indian politics

I think the last thirty years of Indian politics and policy can be explained using the “public enemy number one” theory. It all started off with emergency, when the Congress easily became the enemy. For the elections in 1977, an alliance of non-congress parties was quickly cobbled up with the sole intention of keeping the congress out. As expected, it collapsed soon enough, and the Congress got back to power. And maintained its status.

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Can I play with elasticity?

The government’s latest gimmick to keep petrol prices unrealistically low is to impose a special additional levy on income tax and corporate tax in order to finance the deficit. Basically a scheme to rob peter and pay paul. Make the higher-income guys pay for the excess oil consumption by the lower income guys.

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Double meanings

I seem to be looking out for “double meanings” in everything. I’m reminded of that seen in Upendra’s seminal movie Shhhh, where the director Kashinath is reputed to be a master of double meanings, and he has an assistant whose sole job is to point out the double meanings that some of the dialogues that Kashinath writes imply.

So earlier today I told

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?”can you do one help?” I know it’s completely ungrammatical but this is the way I used to talk back in my childhood when my english was fairly pathetic. A couple of minutes later I realized that “help” can also be a noun. Such as say “domestic help”. And so there was the double meaning.

A couple of minutes back, I was responding to some comments on some earlier post. And in my hurry to type, and given that my fingers usually don’t talk to each other, I put the space in the wrong position. The comment reads “can bed one once the road is expanded”. And in a minute or two, I’d noticed the double meaning. And here I am blogging about it.

Then, a few days back I was talking to this friend when she felt sleepy. Again my left middle finger played tricks on me and I typed “sweet creams” instead of “sweet dreams”. Only after she’d responded with at “thu” did I realize that there was some double meaning here too.

Buying pickles in Sringeri

That’s what i did immediately before I proceeded to the VidyaShankara temple to look for porn. I spent half an hour at the Sri VidyaShankara Home Products store buying pickles and other assorted condiments. I ended up buying a bottle of Appe Midi Mango pickle (made out of whole uncut tiny mangoes). Then one bottle of Amla (nallikai) thokku – a kind of chutney made with full amlas. My mom later told me she was keen we bought this because I usually don’t eat the fruit in amla pickles, and that it’s good for health.

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Congress fooled by randomness?

It seems like.

They decided to extrapolate based on one data point – Tejaswini Sriramesh beating Deve Gowda – or there might be another which I can’t recall right now and they came to the wonderful conclusion that the Deve Gowda family will get defeated when faced with women candidates. They even got an astrologer to endorse it. And put up two hapless inexperienced women to take on the ghataanughatis? that are Deve Gowda’s sons.

In vaguely unrelated stuff, I wonder if the results of the elections would have been any different had the order of polling been reversed. The main concern for most voters this time round was a stable single-party government – having learned the lessons from two horrible coalitions in the last four years.

Now, considering the BJP’s performance in North Karnataka, and assuming that the exit polls didn’t do too badly, people in the south and center would’ve realized that voting for the BJP would give them the best chance of producing a stable government. And the BJP would’ve won comfortably, without having to bother about haggling with independents.

And also it seems like the Congress and JDS will try and hijack the independent MLAs and somehow cobble together a slim majority. It’ll be a great tragedy if that happens – especially given that we’ve seen how these two parties have worked together before. As it stands out, I expect the BJP to buy out the three MLAs it needs to form a government.