Away from the rallies, politicking, coalition talk and door-to-door campaigns, election coverage usually involves attempting to find a logical voting pattern in an otherwise unpredictable electorate.
The Karnataka Assembly elections provided an opportunity to tour many parts of the State and ask voters the same set of questions on what they thought of the political situation or of specific issues. Answers to such questions generally help reporters strip away all assumptions on the ideals of a democracy. Often, the answer is: “I don’t know, I don’t think much about it.” Some merely follow the candidate or party choice of their husband, or village elders, or local/ religious leaders, or landowners, while the more candid ones point to money, caste and religious considerations in voting.
The more confident answers came when the voters were asked about communal and religious factors. Along the coast, discussions were about neglect and “minority appeasement”, “love jihad”, terrorism, and even about politicians who eat meat before entering temples.
Many answers involved rumours. Some believed the unverified claims about the deaths of cows, of minority mobs running amok, of children being kidnapped for conversion. These quotes gave us an indication of the BJP’s sweep in the area. (The party won 17 of the 19 seats.)
After many such conversations with all religious factions, each upping their conspiracy theories, I was relieved when our journey led us to the Western Ghats to talk about land rights. The issues discussed were encroachments and their regularisation, some even at the cost of lush forests, through political patronage. The concerns voiced shed light on agrarian distress, forest encroachments, and tribals versus settler debates.
We finally stopped at a small junction outside the Sharavathi Wildlife Sanctuary. As it often happens, a one-on-one conversation soon turns into an impromptu gram sabha meeting. One villager, however, cut through the clamour of opinions in anger: “The State government can give five acres of land to Rohingya refugees in Bengaluru, but can’t even give us poor people the 0.5 acres we ask for.” Others agreed.
When I asked him how he had heard about this purported land allotment, which was false news, he said: “We saw it on WhatsApp. It is true. Ask anyone in the village.”
