Ketchup Campaign

Among other things, caste and cash dominated a campaign that had three gladiators fighting it out—Modi, Siddaramaiah and Kumaraswamy.

- Sachidananda Murthy

The farmers of Kolar use tomatoes to make news, by earning huge profits selling bumper crops, or by dumping truckloads of it on highways to protest the slump in prices. No wonder, when the crane garland concept caught the fancy of political parties in Karnataka, candidates in Kolar erected on cranes 30ft-high garlands made of tomatoes, to welcome national campaigners.

Drip irrigation has changed the landscape of Kolar, where once eucalyptus was planted to suit scarce water conditions. But now, horticultural crops are replacing them. The region is indicative of the productivity seen across the state, as agriculture is as much an engine of growth as IT. The districts around Bengaluru, including Kolar, have also become fragrant, because of the large-scale cultivation of roses and other flowers.

Barring the 44 urban constituencies, farmers’ issues dominated the 180 rural seats. Everyone was wooing farmers, by offering everything from loan waivers to high support prices. The Congress said it had done the most for them. Krishna Byre Gowda, the young and professorial-looking agriculture minister, had made it a mission to popularise millets grown in the state’s driest regions. Prime Minister Narendra Modi regularly tore into the track-record of the Congress, blaming Chief Minister Siddaramaiah for the suicide of over 3,000 farmers, which the Congress countered with the figures of farmers who ended their lives in distress during the Modi regime. H.D. Kumaraswamy of the Janata Dal (Secular), meanwhile, claimed that the only genuine farmers’ party was the JD(S), and promised a much bigger loan waiver.