That a difference of two thousand odd votes should see an official recount, three years after the woman became a Member of Parliament and at completely unnecessary cost to the exchequer can happen only here, in namma Bharat!

George W. Bush’s ‘too close to call’ saw him sail through to Pennsylvania Avenue, now didn’t it?
And nobody called that fraudulent!

And yes, a completely different verdict would be true if Joladarashi Shantha stood for elections from Bellary today, given the current anger against the BJP. (Notwithstanding, the Bellary by-election loss which saw a no-show by Mr. Yeddyurappa.)

‘Cos, the simple truth is this – Shantha’s brother Sreeramulu and his ties to the man who ran Bellary, nay Karnataka, like his own fiefdom, are at the heart of the BJP’s own spectacular meltdown; more so, under a caretaker chief minister who is clearly unequal to the task of shepherding it to the polls.
With the CBI hounds sniffing ever closer, the requiem has already been read, the last bugle sounded. A government that came to power on the back of the greenback and tons of sympathy is floundering, barely coming up for air in this befouled atmosphere.

And while there will always be political finger-pointing — we’ve been told the unions have been put up to this public transport strike by rival politicians — there can be no excuse for the inability of this government to anticipate the problems that could emerge and have a contingency plan in place. That is good governance.

The completely unacceptable manner in which KSRTC and BMTC, the two major transport corporations pulled their buses off the streets is a sign that we, the people, are at the very bottom of any and every politician’s list of priorities.

What does it matter to the men and women who have a fleet of cars at their disposal, who just have to snap their fingers for an entire army to do their bidding, while we as mothers and parents have to scramble to find some way for our children to get to school, or pull in favours for them to find their way back home safely. Or that our bare-bones support staff cannot come to work because they are no buses to and from Marathahalli or KR Puram that day? Or the next.

And that the autorickshaw driver thinks it is perfectly reasonable to demand not just double but treble and sometimes four times the normal fare on a day like this?

Why should governments care about the fact that a housewife has to be up at 3 am to fill water because that’s the time the ‘Corporation’ water comes? That in this IT city, we are still unable to tackle the one task that other metros have wrestled to the ground — scientific disposal of garbage. Chennai was once the home of filth. Kozhikode’s overflowing drains were choked with plastic. Driving anywhere in benighted Uttar Pradesh was like walking with Neil Armstrong on the moon.

Today, our city, Bengaluru, has the dubious honour of scoring on all three minuses. And whoa, that’s not including the power deficit that sees electricity go off at any given time of the day or night.

Or a metro that has reduced South Avenue to a dark, concrete mess and Kanakapura Road, that connects two halves of this city to a traffic-snarled hell-hole manned at certain points by – not traffic police – but by construction labourers using ropes and hand signals to direct peak hour traffic.

This government has spent so much of its time in trying to surviving the internal blood-letting that goes by the name of politics, that it has not been able to raise its head above the bullets that are flying around to get any work done.

It may suit Mr. Yeddyurappa to hand over a document listing the holes in the state’s drought relief work; Or for him to make an appearance at the city bus station and signal support for the people. These are empty, meaningless gestures. Will Shettar’s government act on them?

What is needed is a crack team that takes over drought relief and puts in place, proper alternative transport arrangements that ensures the city’s residents are not put to hardship. Some four million people use public transport daily. If you don’t address their woes, that’s four million votes looking for a new home.

Why even negotiate with extortionists masquerading as unionists, supposedly, looking out for the welfare of their workers who have only recently been given a decent payoff! This sounds like the Bombay of old, when George Fernandes brought the city to a complete halt over the flimsiest of demands. (One loved missing school but even that gets tedious after a while). Surely, regression is not the way forward.

And now, if reports are correct, instead of laying down the law – why was ESMA not invoked – the government has buckled and agreed to the demands of the striking staff. Needless to say, this sets a very bad precedent.

Buying their loyalty will buy at best a temporary peace. This is not a long-term solution. What we need are for systems to be set in place that see emergency procedures automatically kick into place. This is the urban jungle. And the laws remain much the same as when nations go to war.

And if there is no constant evaluation of performance, reward and punishment will have little meaning. But who are we kidding here? Promotions accrue to the satellites that circle the star. In the real world. In government.

In keeping with the general mood, then, of cashing in when you can, we have the completely unbecoming spectacle of sundry ‘leaders’ upping the ante, pressuring the hapless Jagadish Shettar for ministerial pelfs. Not because they can help provide improve governance, strengthen the hand of a novice chief minister, but because they can see their last chance at making moolah slipping away.

Which brings one back to the CBI. Their sleuths are circling their prey in the Bellary case. What will happen now that the FIR has been filed, and the raids on a dozen establishments are underway even as we speak. Will the trail lead right to the top? To the office of the chief minister, who at the time also held the mines portfolio?

Insiders say that the former chief minister admitted to the CBI that he could do little over the happenings in Bellary as “his writ did not run there.” In other words, he may have been chief minister of Karnataka but Bellary was a law unto itself, under Gali Janardhan Reddy. The same was true of the Anand Asnotikar who took over the portfolio later.

Krishna Palemar, had the ports and the unions under his command. But he has reportedly much the same story to tell. Pleading innocence over the overnight disappearance of some five lakh tonnes (how much is that exactly) of illegally mined and sequestered iron ore from Belekeri port, he says he – and the unions – did not know how it vanished.

That the falling out over Bellary’s black gold between the Yeddyurappa camp and that of the Reddy brothers is at the heart of this government’s shaky governance is more than obvious. What was the trigger for the final falling out?

Did the mines minister aka the chief minister ask for a bigger cut for every signature on the passes that allowed illegal iron ore to be transported from Bellary to Belekeri? Did Reddy baulk at the demands and decide to throw down the gauntlet after his rival even made a trip to China where his main market was? Hence, the rebellion of Reddy loyalists, that came out of nowhere, as they sat it out in a Hyderabad hotel?

Was it pressure from Lingayat miners who had had enough of the Reddy brothers rule in Bellary, that pushed Yeddyurappa to take over the game that was the catalyst for a full scale confrontation? Some even say that Yeddyurappa had sent his trusted aides to reach out to the Reddy minions, a second rung, that would exclude Reddy and put an alternative mining mob in place, backed by new laws that would cut the earth from under him. Literally.

Gangs of Wasseypur? Anurag Kashyap’s next stop should be Bellary. And how one party’s political fortunes ran aground in the dust of the minefields of Bellary.