As you head to one of the main intersections in the town of Raichur, located in the northern Karnataka district of the same name, you begin to notice hundreds of immaculately-dressed women with steel tiffin carriers balanced on their heads streaming towards a central traffic circle. There, contractors with bloodshot eyes, starched white shirts and gold watches cruise around on scooters looking for labour. The women begin to get agitated. Not getting selected will mean a 10-km trudge home and empty stomachs for the next few days. "There's nothing to eat at home," says Jaaralamma who has two children, also working as labourers. "There is no water for our paddy crops. If I don't get a job today, I don't know what we will do," she adds.
This is a haunting, regular sight in Northern Karnataka. This arid part of the state, which represents 60 per cent of its land mass, is a serial underperformer, and its districts such as Raichur, Bijapur, Yadgir, Gulbarga, Bellary, Koppal, Bagalkot and Bidar, among others, dramatically trail the rest of the state in all major economic and human development indicators. "It is a huge, serious, chronic crisis," says Narendar Pani, Professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore.
In the 1950s, at the time of reorganisation of states on the basis of the linguistic formula, the territory that belonged to the erstwhile state of Hyderabad under the Nizam's rule was fragmented into three parts and distributed among Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka. One-third went to Maharashtra, one-sixth to Karnataka and the remaining half was given to Andhra Pradesh. Clearly, this northern bit was way behind the southern part of Karnataka (the erstwhile Kingdom of Mysore). Still, as researcher Mari Bhat has shown, despite starting off pretty much as equals in all socio-economic indicators, the part that went to Maharashtra has done significantly better in education, especially in eradicating illiteracy, and the one that went to Andhra has done better in health and family planning. Karnataka's portion has trailed in both fields.
Sure, the area has some heavy odds stacked against it: Karnataka has the second-largest arid zone in the country, next only to Rajasthan. Although the annual average rainfall in the state is well above 1,000 mm, the 11 districts of the interior north receive only around 600 mm of it. Plus, irrigation hasn't exactly been either widespread or a tremendous success. "The rural areas have paid a major price for this corruption through the diversion of development funds," wrote Narendar Pani recently in a pre-poll blog. "There have of course been other corrupt governments in Karnataka. But the ones that got re-elected typically had a major rural initiative like land reforms or decentralisation. There has been no sign of such an initiative from the Bharatiya Janata Party," he added.
Karnataka hasn't done too badly when you compare its poverty alleviation numbers with the rest of its southern brethren. Between 2004-05 and 2009-10, Tamil Nadu came out tops by reducing poverty by 12.3 percentage points, Karnataka brought it down by 9.7 percentage points, Andhra Pradesh by 8.5 percentage points and Kerala by 7.6 percentage points. The state also lifted its literacy levels from 66.6 per cent to 75.6 per cent. But numbers can be misleading.
Take the case of Bellary. The district that once had the largest number of private planes per capita, had as many as 33 per cent of families in the district classified as Below Poverty Line (BPL) as per the 2011 Census-the third highest after Raichur and Kolar. The 2011 Census also shows that Yadgir has the lowest female literacy rate of 41.31 per cent, and the other northern Karnataka districts of Raichur, Gulbarga, Bidar, Bellary and Koppal fall below the state average of 68 per cent. At the other end of the spectrum are Bangalore and Dakshina Kannada at 85 and 84 per cent respectively.
Drive around Raichur and you experience the area's socio-economic degradation first hand. The soil is dark and fertile, but most of the hand-pumps there are broken. The area is flanked by the river Krishna, 17 kilometres away on one side, and by the Tungabadra, 25 kilometres on the other, so water is plentiful. Yet, not a single irrigation project in decades makes it cruelly out of grasp. When they do in fact get water from these rivers, it comes in the form of a flood. "Last year, the Tungabadra rose 35 feet abover above normal height and wiped out 54 villages completely," says a local non governmental organisation worker. "In fact, there was a huge, positive response to provide relief. But local leaders put a stop to it," he adds.
People in this area look resilient but the smallest of upheavals tend to throw their lives into crisis, say observers. A common ailment in the area is anaemia-farmers tend to favour cultivating cash crops like cotton, leaving very little possibility of a nutritious diet for their families. A drought exacerbates this. One NGO worker reported 10 cases of severe malnutrition out of 50 children during a spot check-up at a village recently. In another village, Vadepalli, 40 cases of tuberculosis out of a population of 250 were discovered.
When it comes to education, the picture gets bleaker. In one village close to Raichur, only 3 children went above the tenth standard in fifty years. The majority of girls don't attend school beyond the 5th grade because, sixth standard onwards is often at a village that is a 5 kilometre walk away. A school equipped with a 7th standard is 15 kilometres away.
So, in order to prevent their girl children from sitting around and getting into trouble, parents tend to marry them off as quickly as possible. Gita Sen, who has researched health issues in Koppal, next door to Raichur, reveals that in a health survey in 2000, the age at first cohabitation among currently married women (ages 15-44) was below 18 in 73.9 per cent of the cases; 41 per cent of them had illiterate husbands; and 51.4 per cent of girls married during 1999 (until the survey) were below 18. Clearly, women and children suffer the most in Northern Karnataka and the state's maternal mortality rate-at 178 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2007-09 and far above that of Tamil Nadu's (97), Andhra Pradesh's (134) or even Gujarat's (148)-indicated that.
If Karnataka wants to be taken seriously as a state that is committed to equitable growth-which means looking beyond Bangalore-it will have to work hard to remove these startling regional imbalances.
