Karnataka’s broken political economy | Number Theory

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The first part of this series explained why the Siddaramaiah government’s plan to re-stratify reservations in the state is a risky political strategy that aims to resurrect the AHNDA coalition which Devraj Urs perfected in the 1970s. The second part of this series will argue that this politically risky move might have been motivated by the state’s broken political economy which has led to entrenched inequality.

Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah (middle) with deputy CM DK Shivakumar and speaker UT Khader at the Vidhana Soudha in Bengaluru. (ANI)

Karnataka’s broken political economy

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  Karnataka has the lowest relative income share for agriculture among major states…

  While Karnataka is known to the rest of the world for its success in IT, about half of the state’s population is still employed in agriculture. While many states have comparable or even higher employment share for agriculture in India, what distinguishes Karnataka is the fact that agriculture has a very low income share in Karnataka. This means that agriculture’s income share relative to its share in employment (share of income divided by share in employment) is the lowest for Karnataka among major Indian states. This economic inequality is bound to have led to lot of unfulfilled aspiration in Karnataka’s politics. It is no wonder that Siddaramaiah wrote a letter to Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in 2023 arguing that places like Bengaluru had artificially inflated Karnataka’s GDP, leading to a belief that poverty was not a problem in Karnataka.
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  Social inequality in salaried jobs in Karnataka is more than what it is at an all-India level

  HT has analysed unit-level data from the latest Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) to look at the social inequality in salaried jobs in Karnataka by looking at each social group’s relative share. This has been calculated by dividing a group’s share in salaried workers by its overall share in workers. A calculation of relative share of broad social groups – Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST), Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and others – shows that OBCs and SCs have a lower relative share in salaried jobs in Karnataka than at the all-India level. Almost all of it is because of a higher-than-average relative share for non-SC-ST-OBC workers in salaried jobs in the state.
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  A cause of greater social inequality in jobs is a bigger share of private sector salaried jobs

  While reservations in government jobs have helped bridge the social inequality in salaried jobs in India, they are only applicable in government jobs. A break-up of all salaried jobs by government and private sector shows that the latter has a much bigger share in Karnataka than at the all-India level. Karnataka’s lead in better salaried jobs in the private sector (ones with written contracts) is not surprising given its status as India’s leading service sector hub. However, this could well have led to a greater social inequality in access to salaried jobs in the state. In fact, a lot of better-quality salaried jobs in Karnataka could have gone to migrant workers leading to even greater heartburn.
• What we understand...

  The political tussle in the state which may now boil down to Vokkaligas and Lingayats versus the rest is essentially an effort to secure control over resources distributed by the state, as the more rewarding private economy’s barriers are too difficult to breach for a large part of the state’s population. For all the political turmoil this will likely unleash in the state, it is more likely to end up as a zero-sum game where different community groups try to outdo each other in usurping part of a smaller income pie than take substantive steps to correct systemic inequality in the state.