The politics of Bengaluru at election time has once again turned out to be very different from the city’s politics between elections. Nowhere is this clearer than in the case of the politics of the steel flyover. Between elections there was a movement against the steel flyover with the then minister who was pushing the project, KJ George, being accused in popular debates of corruption.

The movement was successful enough to force the scrapping of the project. Yet, in the just concluded elections, George stood from his old constituency in Bengaluru and won by one of the larger margins in the State, despite his party losing a third of the seats it held in the State Assembly.

If the success of civil society movements is not reflected in electoral politics it has much to do with the two very different approaches of voters to making themselves heard in a democracy. The political thinking behind civil society movements, like that against the steel flyover, is that of an individualistic voter. The campaign was designed to convince voters that the flyover was a bad idea prompted entirely by corrupt motives. And since this campaign was carried out close to an election year, it was expected to have negative electoral impact on George’s fortunes.

Different strokes

In contrast, politicians recognise that most Indian voters, including urban ones, think quite differently from middle class protesters. These voters are quite aware that their ability to bargain individually with their elected representatives is very limited. What they do instead is bargain through larger groups formed on the basis of caste, class, language, or any other identity. They are then able to put up very specific demands, ranging from public water taps to the concreting of roads, which need to be met in return for their votes. As long as the elected representative keeps her part of the bargain these voters are not too bothered about the fate of one flyover or the other. The trouble for the elected representatives arises when competitive politics raises the number and size of the demands. In a context where there are also severe resource constraints, there are limits to the number of such patronage schemes the urban politician can offer from State funds.

In addition, the urban politician cannot also ignore several specific needs of her constituents. Their problems can range from getting a child admission in the local nursery school to helping the family deal with a medical emergency. These interventions that do not involve the state invariably have to be financed from personal resources. It is then no surprise that the vast majority of the just-elected legislators in Bengaluru city are crorepatis.

Among the many difficulties with this system of privatised patronage is that it does not really care about where the money is coming from. An elected representative who is willing to part with her private funds to support a child’s education is to be supported even if that money is the result of corrupt practices. An elected representative can justify, at least to herself, that unless she is corrupt she will not be able to function as an effective public representative.

Vicious circle

Indeed, she could self-righteously step into a vicious circle where she believes she is corrupt in order to help her constituents, who in turn demand more from her, making her even more corrupt.

The consequences of this self-righteously corrupt urban electoral politics are becoming increasingly obvious. The more resilient politicians would like to keep their chances of getting caught down by indulging in fewer corrupt deals. This makes them very sensitive to what they can earn from each deal. This results in a strong preference for large projects where the earning per individual act of corruption is very high. There is thus an in-built tendency for the government’s policy for urban development to be reduced to a few large projects. And it also helps that these projects can be presented as signs of modernised urbanisation.

This view of the development of a city as a series of isolated projects ensures that the dynamics of the urban development process is missed. And Bengaluru is a striking example of the costs of such a fragmented approach. It has a new expensive international airport located at a point where it has increased the distance to travellers need to cover in the city to take a flight, contributing to the growing traffic congestion.

It has for years believed the city’s garbage problem can be solved by simply dumping it in a rural area, and when the affected villages objected Bengaluru was left with a garbage crisis it is still trying to cope with. Urban planners may call for an integrated and dynamic view of the city as a whole, but the nature of urban politics in India militates against it.

The writer is a professor at the School of Social Science, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru

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