Leaders of the Indian states dubbed the "Silicon Valley of the East" face a tough challenge today when voters angered by the growing gap between the rich and the poor cast ballots in the third phase of India's general elections.
The chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, N. Chandrababu Naidu, has been lauded by Microsoft Corp mogul Bill Gates for running a high-tech government in the southern state. And Bangalore, capital of neighboring Karnataka state, produces some of the best software development and back-office outsourcing in the world.
But while Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka states are home to many of India's digital-age yuppies, the region also has some of the country's most destitute farmers. Critics say the state governments have focused on high-tech and ignored the region's small-scale cotton and peanut producers.
PHOTO: AP
Both Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh are electing state assemblies today alongside national votes for a new Parliament. Polls have suggested Naidu may lose due to a voter backlash and his counterpart in Karnataka, S.M. Krishna, may just slip by to retain his post.
"The gains of technology are not feeding back to the economy. There is no trickle-down effect," said Pala-gummi Sainath, author of the best-selling Everybody Loves a Good Drought, which looked at the impact of government policy on farmers.
Today is the third of five phases in India's elections running through May 10. The first vote was held April 20.
In an indication of the desperation among the region's poor, Andhra Pradesh peanut farmer Nagamani Reddy killed himself on the eve of the April 20 vote by drinking pesticide to escape grinding debt.
Sainath said Andhra Pradesh's agricultural output declined by more than 17 percent last fiscal year. That was when Naidu was winning accolades the world over for his techno-logy prowess.
"Many people are overawed by the sight of laptop wielding chief minister. But that's only an illusion," Sainath said.
Critics say government indifference and economic reforms since 1991 have exacerbated the plight of the southern farmers, who are already at the mercy of droughts, high seed prices and loan sharks. Suicide has been a major problem among the region's farmers in the past decade. India's Frontline magazine said that 300 cotton farmers committed suicide in 1997 in Andhra Pradesh.
In Karnataka, the third year of drought has highlighted the government's inability to provide adequate irrigation water, triggering widespread resentment among farmers.
"Politicians have used information technology as a smoke screen to divert attention from their duties to the people," said New Delhi-based social activist Vandana Shiva.
They have been liberal with corporations, but tough with farmers, causing hikes in seed and fertilizer prices, and falls in farming incomes, she said.
Shiva's Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, estimates that farmers lose US$26 billion annually, or twice the country's outsourcing revenues, from crop failures, poor produce prices, high interest rates and debt.
Most Indian farmers own less than 0.40 hectare of land.
"Suicide of farmers ... cannot be just dismissed as personal or psychological problems or mass hysteria," said a study last year by the Hyderabad-based National Institute of Rural Development.
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