Political parties find it easier to float emotional narratives, including real or imagined injustice to communities, and dragging in red herrings to sway the electorate. Attracting electors through tall, unrealizable promises, while actually bribing them with money, goodies and last-minute inauguration of big-ticket development projects is the standard election playbook. But what really matters to the electorate? An ADR-Daksh survey in 2018 threw up interesting findings. The survey identified the most important ten issues for urban and rural voters, and the top issue that bothers people in urban and rural areas alike is water supply and quality. Karnataka, while being top in software export in the country, has not been able to provide its population with quality water supply, if the survey is any indicator. The state has no perennial rivers, but it has 36,000 tanks or lakes that have sustained the livelihoods of the population over centuries, but these have been neglected. Apart from water, the four common issues of concern for both urban and rural voters are better electricity supply, better schools, better roads, as well as more hospitals and Primary Health Centres (PHC). Roads in Karnataka are not the best in the country, and those in the capital city are grossly inadequate to deal with the load of traffic, which is reputed among the worst in the world.
