Boards without purpose, politics without shame

 Karnataka’s government keeps creating decorative posts to please its loyalists—while the state treasury gasps for air.

By any measure of governance, Karnataka’s latest spree of appointments to boards and corporations is indefensible. These bodies—hundreds of them scattered across departments—are bureaucratic fossils: unfunded, inactive, and irrelevant. Yet the government insists on keeping them alive, not out of necessity but out of political convenience.

The pretext is “representation.” The reality is appeasement. These chairmanships and memberships are consolation prizes for party loyalists who didn’t make it to the cabinet. Once the list is announced, the appointees pose for photographs, bask briefly in media glare, and then vanish into irrelevance. With no funds to even hold a meeting, these bodies serve neither governance nor the public interest.

The irony would be comical if it weren’t tragic. Even as the government filled these ornamental posts, the State Administrative Reforms Commission urged that such corporations be wound up altogether for reasons of economy and efficiency. The Commission’s argument is irrefutable: they serve no useful purpose and drain the public exchequer.

When a state cannot pay salaries on time, when employees are reportedly taking their own lives out of despair, maintaining hundreds of defunct corporations is not merely wasteful—it is obscene. A government that cannot meet its essential obligations has no moral right to indulge in political extravagance. Governance is not theatre. Yet in Karnataka, politics has become an endless act of optics: announcements without outcomes, titles without authority, promises without purpose.

For politicians, visibility is victory. A photograph in the newspaper matters more than the file on the desk. But this obsession with optics over output has crippled governance. What remains is a hollow system that feeds egos while starving institutions.

If the government is serious about reform, it must start by dismantling these zombie corporations and academies. Merge the few that still have a pulse with functional departments, and bury the rest with dignity. The funds thus saved could serve real needs—schools that lack teachers, hospitals without doctors, and villages that wait endlessly for basic infrastructure.

It is time for Karnataka to shed its illusions. These appointments are not symbols of inclusivity; they are signs of decay. The state deserves better than governance by announcement and politics by selfie.