Who are the millennials of Karnataka voting for this elections?

As Karnataka sleeps through a Sunday after voting in the most unpredictable of elections in the recent past, what got tucked under their beds was good democracy — the one that promoted rational discourses, the one that rewarded committed public servants, and the one that weeded out incompetent leadership. Rather, the one that the founding fathers of this country believed stood for the above ideals.

Whoever wins, what the run-up to this election has left me with is disappointment at the lack of lucid discussions on issues from any side, disillusionment in seeing brazenly corrupt public servants celebrating their way back into our system, and discontentment at the absence of objective treatises on how our leaders have performed, or how then intend to do so.

“I’m not voting. I’m against democracy.” A friend of mine, engineer, MBA, working at an MNC in Bangalore, proudly proclaimed. “Whoever comes to power, how does it matter to me?”

I’ve been living in Bangalore for the last two years, and I’ve driven around most towns across southern and central Karnataka, but never had I understood this state and its people as much as I did in the past two weeks.

I learnt from political conversations on how Karnataka came into being from multiple, fragmented strips of land and their patterns and behaviours. People and our media have educated me on how Mysore Karnataka will caste their vote only for someone from the Vokkaliga caste, and Mumbai Karnataka will do the same for a Lingayat.

I’ve heard from many sides of how the coastal strip from Mangalore to Karwar will vote only the way their mutt says and figured why Yogi Adityanath shifted here even when his own state was in crisis, and Rahul Gandhi shuttled between temples hitherto unknown.

Hyderabad and Karnataka didn’t appear to have much to do apart from picking an illegal miner from either side of the table. Sadly, never across those conversations had I heard any of their stances on the issues of these places — the alarming rate of farmer suicides in Mysore Karnataka, water and power sharing disputes with Goa and Maharashtra in Mumbai Karnataka, the fatally violent communal clashes between the Hindu RSS and Muslim PFI in coastal Karnataka and the extremely backward position of growth and public amenities in the resource rich Hyderabad Karnataka region.

Instead, what I did hear resonating across this campaign season was a prime minister who questioned whether any Congress leader visited Bhagat Singh during his days in jail, and a chief minister who questioned whether Amit Shah was a Jain or a Hindu.

Keeping aside the absurdity of BJP questioning Congress’s credentials in our freedom struggle and the Congress questioning the BJP’s credentials in Hindu nationalism, what amused me most was the inherent contradiction in the choices of both parties here — BJP’s use of Bhagat Singh, a Bakunin reading atheist as their icon; and the Congress’s choice of attacking Hindu nationalism through a claim that it’s pioneer probably wasn’t "Hindu". As we dissolved ourselves in the frivolousness of these statements and never bothered to look at the report card of the incumbent government or the plans set forth by the challengers, we tucked the essence of democracy under our beds.

Out of academic interest, I Googled to check the manifestoes of parties for this election. While I couldn’t even find the official Congress manifesto among search results, BJP’s site showed an Error 502 when I clicked on the PDF link. A few disjoint media pieces were all I found, those too nit-picking omissions and commenting on lack of depth in promises and plans.

Through our naivety, we’ve reduced our politicians to memes, our TV debates into entertainment spaces, and our public discourses to hate mongering fields.

For the past few days, the clouds had unleashed their fury over Bangalore, flooding roads in the capital of a state which had an 85 per cent rainfall deficit across the past three years. My friend who did not believe in democracy was stuck at Silk Board junction for two hours on the night before polling and called me up when she finally managed to get home.

"I’ve been living here for a decade now and both the governments during that time have watched this city turn into a colossal mess without doing anything. I will go and vote tomorrow for sure," she squealed.

The rain gods held their breath on polling day to make way for her to vote. Perhaps those traffic freezing rains were the city’s way of reminding its citizens why the identity of the government, which held power affected them in more ways than they thought.

Sadly, for my friend, the choice was one between the devil and the deep blue sea.

Also read: What's going on behind the scenes in Karnataka — Congress, BJP backroom talks with JD(S)?