The TV news-channel screens have been full of images of middle-class homes in Bangalore being demolished and of their anguished owners watching their lifetime earnings being reduced to rubble even while the Karnataka government claims it had to take this drastic step since sections of India’s Electronics City had been recently flooded in the wake of heavy rains due to water-logging since these houses had been built on storm-water drains, flouting all norms.

However, no drastic action has been taken against the real-estate mafia which had developed these urban layouts over the storm-water drains or on the few remaining lake-beds. When asked why no drastic measures were being taken against this mafia, a spokesman of the ruling Congress party in Karnataka stated that action against the real-estate developers who had flouted the regulations and the civic officials who had given the clearances would be taken after a thorough probe.

No such probe was deemed necessary while instantly demolishing the homes of middle-class owners who had invested their lifetime earnings in buying houses and apartments after accepting in good faith the clearance certificates given to these developers by the civic officials.

It was only after the intervention of the courts that a few officials were suspended. Those middle-class owners who had to watch their lifetime earnings being reduced to rubble wondered why similar action was not being taken against the big shopping malls which had come up on encroached land.

The TV news-channels showed concerned Bangaloreans like the investor and former Infosys director Mohandas Pai and the reputed business consultant Harish Bijoor holding forth on the utter lack of transparency evinced in the immediate response of demolishing middle-class homes while not taking stringent action against the real-estate mafia and the corrupt civic officials.

However, the inconvenient truth, which is often sidestepped in these prime-time discussions, is that the state’s political parties are heavily funded by the real-estate mafia. The real-estate mafia is not just funding political parties. In the last Karnataka assembly elections, held in the summer of 2013, a significant number of the candidates put up by the main political parties were realtors who were actively involved in the real-estate business.

The BJP claims that a prominent state Congress minister, who resigned recently, was himself a leading real-estate tycoon who flouted the norms. The Congress claims that the water-logging in many parts of Bangalore is due to the wholesale and illegal clearances given for developing urban layouts between 2008 and 2013 when the BJP was in power in the state. The Janata Dal (Secular) blames both parties and is in turn accused by them of large-scale corruption when its leader was the chief minister.

Meanwhile, the anguished middle-class citizens have to overnight watch their houses being reduced to rubble even though they invested their life-term earnings in buying homes on the basis of the clearances given to the real-estate mafia by corrupt civic officials who would have got away but for the intervention of the courts which refused to accept the government argument that action could only be taken after a thorough probe.

Many of the middle-class families have been forced to live in shelters like Syrian refugees even though they have sales-deeds, property-tax receipts, katha (ownership) certificates and electricity connections, all of which are given only after the real-estate developers have satisfied the civic officials that all procedures and processes have been completed and that everything is as per the norms. How the real-estate developers `satisfied’ the civic officials is, of course, the million-dollar question!