Lok Sabha Elections 2019: Making sense of Mandya’s record voter turnout

Bengaluru: It was a blockbuster even before its release. And rightfully so.

Packed to the brim with star power, strong and powerful cast, a healthy mix of drama and a generous dollop of suspense that could compete with any family entertainer. Such has been the excitement in Mandya, that has become one of the biggest political theatres in the state, if not the country in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.

The record turnout of 80.23%, the highest in its history, indicating that the battle was not just between candidates but between the people of this region, known to be swayed by emotion than more compelling factors that an election--or a candidate--has to offer.

The drama adding 8.76% additional voter turnout over 2014 that recorded 71.47% that cannot be seen in ‘traditional’ political science light that connects higher turnout with anti-incumbency. Both candidates in Mandya are debutants.

“The media, particularly electronic media, hyped Mandya,” H.Vishwanath, the state president of the Janata Dal (Secular) said.

Sumalatha Amarnath (Sumalatha Ambareesh), the veteran had decided to take on 31 year old rookie Nikhil Kumaraswamy. But their experience was in the field of cinema and not in politics.

Sumalatha was fighting on the legacy of her late husband, M.H.Amarnath who went by the screen name, Ambareesh. Nikhil, an two film old actor and son of Karnataka chief minister H.D.Kumaraswamy and grandson of former Prime Minister H.D.Deve Gowda, was heralding the entry of the third generation of politicians from his family, that has a strong presence in south Karnataka, otherwise known in political parlance as the ‘Vokkaliga belt’.

But the people of the district including the dominant Vokkaliga community, believed to back the JD(S), split by the decision of its party to overlook local leaders and even L.R.Shivarame Gowda, who won the November by-polls, to paradrop Nikhil. Locals and political analysts believe that Nikhil’s candidature was pushed by Kumaraswamy to retain the power balance within the family after the Deve Gowda decided to give up his Hassan parliamentary seat to Prajwal Revanna, his other grandson.

But family politics could not side-step party politics in a region where the Congress and JD(S) workers have fought bitter and bloody battles and were unwilling to reconcile their differences just because their top brass had. Rebels from the Congress, JD(S) and formal support by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) giving Sumalatha the confidence to take on the combined might of the Gowda household.

The burden of Sumalatha’s loss, a recently widowed woman, would be a cross that the people of the district would bear taking away the edge from Nikhil’s campaign.

Mandya, that accounts as the biggest market for Kannada cinema, saw media attention that it had been craving for but not necessarily for the reasons it wished for.

The region, that is often considered a darling of the pro-rural Janata Dal (Secular) party, accounted for one of the highest number of farmer suicides in the state. Known for its fertile lands, Mandya, has only half of it land covered under irrigation and sees most of its farmers take to the streets each time there is some development over the Cauvery river water sharing dispute with neighbouring Tamil Nadu.

The ongoing elections had no mention of these issues.

“It was high voltage and created excitement from day one. It was as if the people were contesting the elections,” Jagadish Shettar, former Karnataka chief minister and senior BJP leader said.

Though he attributes the higher turnout to more youngsters wanting to see Narendra Modi as PM again, G.Parameshwar, Deputy CM and senior Congress leader attributes to reasons that may be unpalatable to the BJP. “It was like a competition,” he says, referring to the contest between JD(S) and Congress party workers who showed up in large numbers to help the coalition candidate.

Though the parties have different views to explain the higher voter turnout, Mandya has one of the biggest, if not the biggest phenomenon to watch out for when the results are announced on 23 May. In cinema parlance, “picture abhi baaki hai.”