Has Congress-led Karnataka govt been able to live up to its 'guarantees'

A debate is simmering in Karnataka: About the performance of the "Congress guarantees" that brought the party to power in the state in May last year. Aditi Phadnis explains

Even as the Congress-led Karnataka government struggles to contain the fallout of a proposed law, now withdrawn, to allocate jobs in the private sector for locals (Kannadigas), another debate is simmering in the background: About the performance of the “Congress guarantees” that brought the party to power in the state in May last year.
 

These schemes were meant to be a template for the Congress’s offering for other states of India and they arose out of internal discussion in the party around the data from the Consumer Pyramid Households Survey (CPHS), conducted by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy and other sources. The data provides significant insights into consumption inequality. “The debate on equity versus growth is well known. Growth was expected to create a trickle-down effect and improve the lives of low-income families. But growth also tended to perpetuate inequality. What if we could put money in the hands of low-income groups via subsidies and income-topping, which would then consume and their consumption would push the economy to grow,” said a former bureaucrat who had participated in the discussion.
 

This discussion led to the proposal, for instance, that travel mobility for women would not only improve their joining the labour force but also contribute to consumption by adding to family income. A transport subsidy for women was thought to be the answer. Accordingly, the Congress devised the scheme of free travel for women in public-transport buses (Shakti), which turned out to be hugely popular and contributed to paying rich dividends to the party in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Ninety-two per cent of state transport (the scheme does not apply to deluxe or air conditioned buses) is covered by the scheme.
 

This showed: The Congress’s vote in 2024 increased 56 per cent over its 2019 figure. The party won only one seat in 2019 with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) bagging 25 of the 28 (and the Mandya seat was won by a BJP-supported independent candidate). In 2024, the Congress stopped the BJP at 17 and won nine Lok Sabha seats [the Janata Dal (Secular), an ally of the BJP, won two].
 

But reality has come to bite the state government just a year after gaining power in the state.
 

On July 12, Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) passed a resolution proposing a 20 per cent fare hike. The KSRTC chairman and Gubbi member of Legislative Assembly, S R Srinivasa, told reporters on July 14: “An increase in ticket prices is inevitable. We held a meeting two days ago and decided to send a proposal for a 15-20 per cent hike in fare. The hike is needed for the survival of KSRTC, which is incurring huge losses after implementing the Shakti scheme.”
 

He said: “The prices of fuel and other automobile parts have gone up substantially. Salaries of KSRTC employees have not been revised since 2020. The corporation faced a Rs 295 crore loss in the last three months.”
 

Raghav Chakravarthy and Prerna Seth, who have evaluated the Shakti scheme as part of an ongoing collaboration between their organisation, JustJobs Network, and the Government of Karnataka, said “while it is too early to say if the scheme has propelled women to access new and better work opportunities, it has eased access to existing work opportunities; this is especially true for self-employed and informal women workers”. The scheme has significantly improved women’s access to health care, they added. However, they acknowledged the pressure on public finances from schemes of this nature.
 

The BJP, however, is irate. Speaking to Business Standard, the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, B Y Vijayendra, said: “The Congress came to power on the strength of five guarantees but failed to deliver on them, and now they seem to have lost interest after their Lok Sabha defeat. From the beginning, the government’s implementation of its guarantees has been riddled with conditions and half-heartedness, with even the promised free rice not being provided. In contrast, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has been distributing free food grains to the poor for years and continues to do so.”
 

“In just 14 months, the Congress not only failed to deliver on its guarantees but has driven Karnataka, a progressive and revenue-surplus state, to the brink of bankruptcy and economic uncertainty, bringing development to a total standstill.”
 

Congress leaders themselves have flagged the problems with the “Guarantees”.
 

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s economic advisor Basavaraj Rayareddi said last week that allocations to the guarantees were making it hard to get funds for other infrastructure development works. He was inaugurating works in his constituency in Koppal. “The chief minister has made me his economic advisor, and I interact with him daily. This money has come (for the lake project), or else it wouldn’t have come...impossible. This is the only work that is happening in the entire state, because guarantees will themselves finish things... Rs 60,000-65,000 crore we have to spend on (guarantees). I know how difficult it is.”
 

The Congress candidate for the North Bangalore Lok Sabha seat, Rajeev Gowda, said the challenge was not to the guarantees themselves but “concern about the way they will be funded”. He said there was enough evidence that the guarantees were slowly “transforming lives” and, where necessary, they had been tweaked for financial sustainability. For instance, the scheme for the unemployed youth is popular because it provides cash support while the unemployed find jobs or set up businesses. But to make things feasible, it has been applied only to those who have been unemployed for a year, not two as originally announced by the government.
 

The BJP says the whole scheme is regressive because it turns labour away from the job market.
 

Gowda said the Congress would find money to continue the guarantees by toning up the tax administration and plugging leakages in revenue collection. Retired Indian Administrative Service officers of the Karnataka cadre are less sanguine and concede that “political will” is needed to plug leakages in taxes.
 

The BJP concedes the guarantees were politically popular and cannot be rolled back. But Vijayendra said: “We secured a lead in 136 Assembly segments which is particularly significant given that Congress had won a massive mandate just a year earlier based on their promises and guarantees. The people realised that the Congress lacked seriousness, and punished them in the Lok Sabha elections.”
 

Gowda said the party’s commitment to the guarantees was intact and as investment poured into the state, public funding would be found for them.