The monsoon maths is not working out in Bengaluru and the maths is now driving Karnataka politics. Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar has assured the party that the long-awaited cabinet expansion will be completed this week, which is directly linked to the drought, which has already engulfed over 170 taluks. The major political rotation in the state in months being billed as a reaction to the failure of the monsoon season is itself telling in the sense that the priorities of India's second-most industrial state have taken a hit.

Behind that framing are the numbers that are quite stark. In recent weeks, Karnataka has experienced rainfall shortfalls reaching up to 60 per cent, while deputy chief minister G. Parameshwara stated that the shortfall may be as high as 68 per cent in the districts where it is a cause of concern. Of the 245 taluks in the state, just a few have received surplus rainfall while more than 150 taluks are facing deficient rains and more than a dozen are in “severe” category. Ten districts have recorded shortfalls of 30 to 60 percent this July, while thirteen will face shortages of 60 to 97 percent. The City of Bengaluru itself did not experience any drop for a whole fortnight. It's not a dry patch on the ground; it's a water emergency statewide, and a new administration, just eight weeks old, into its current form.

Shivakumar has succeeded as Chief Minister on June 3, following a power sharing deal with Siddaramaiah, who got the Deputy Chief Minister's berth, after a long-standing enmity between the two in Congress party. He was sworn in that week, along with 13 other ministers, less than the state's cabinet's maximum of 34 according to the state's Constitution. It is a week after a public deadline set by the Chief Minister for this expansion, which has been built up for several months with posters outside the party office and lobbying by the party MLAs who await a place on the list.

It's no surprise that the cabinet decision was packaged with the drought response. The bigger council of ministers provides Shivakumar with more hands to pull the strings when it comes to relief work in the districts, as well as the satisfaction that he can meet the demands of caste and regional representation issues that have been festering since June, when the all-male, Vokkaliga-heavy government that he has formed was criticized even by fellow Congressmen. There's another cruel reality buried within the news, however—governments in India tend to expand their cabinets to make it look like they're on the move when the reality on the ground is that they're struggling to deal with a crisis. Promising more than fixing 157 taluks' worth of dry borewells is easy.

In substance, the government response so far is to provide Rs 1 crore per rural taluk for drinking water, a dedicated budget of Rs 117 crore for water supply infrastructure for the rural areas, and guidance for the district collectors on GPS tagging of every new bore well to avoid bogus or inflated drilling allegations to the exchequer. Farmers have been specifically advised that they should not start sowing on the assumption that rain or reservoir release will come on time, and to encourage crop insurance enrolment. This is a lesson that Karnataka had been forced to learn the hard way in 2023 when it declared 195 taluks drought-hit in the state amidst similar conditions and eventually sought Rs 17,901 crore of relief funds from the Centre following the loss of crops in around 45 lakh hectares. Early signs from previous droughts indicated losses of 10-15 percent of the foodgrain production target when the foodgrain gap is of this size, and that it has a cascading effect on rural incomes, rural demand for food inputs, and ultimately food inflation at the retail level across the state.

Agriculture, by contrast, has a relatively small contribution to Karnataka's GSDP compared to other sectors like services and technology-driven economy and has the highest number of people in the rural sector which makes the political consequence of a poor monsoon much heavier than the economic. That's why chief ministers turn to visible gestures cash announcements, review meetings and borewell audits when the deeper solution of better water storage infrastructure, crop diversification and quicker insurance payments takes years to implement, not weeks.

The Chief Minister also pointed to a leg in Delhi in this story. He's going to meet Karnataka's MPs to update them on drought and long-standing Cauvery, Mekedatu and Mahadayi river issues before the current session of Parliament and he will attend a meet with an All-India Parliamentary delegation when he comes back to Bengaluru. The Assembly session itself has been postponed due to the delay associated with the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls (SIR), and now the political calendar and the drought calendar are converging in the same tight timeframe.

The common thread is accountability, or lack thereof, in this. Ministers have been instructed to put aside differences in politics and act as a single unit under administration and district in-charge ministers to meet in grievance twice a month, irrespective of party affiliation, and visit constituencies irrespective of party affiliation. On the paper these are decent instructions. The test Chitradurga, Vijayapura and Kalaburagi voters will put this Congressman to is whether he will make it through the extensions of the cabinets that are mostly being expanded because of internal Congress arithmetic and not for the creation of a robust drought infrastructure. Changing the order of the chairs can be the result of a reshuffle. This alone can't restore the rain.