On Independence Day, 15 August 2026, the Chief Minister's Office of Karnataka laid out a sweeping account of the state's economic momentum — investment approvals, foreign capital inflows, a new industrial policy, and a sixth welfare guarantee — framing it all around a single, unambiguous promise: that the gains of growth must reach the young, the farmer, the woman, the worker, and the elderly.

₹1.34 lakh crore in approvals, ₹1.12 lakh crore in FDI

The CMO's post, part of a series (numbered 15/20), states that over the past three years, Karnataka approved 945 investment proposals worth more than ₹1.34 lakh crore. In the single year just past, the state claims to have attracted ₹1.12 lakh crore in foreign direct investment — a figure that, if borne out, would represent one of the largest single-year FDI hauls any Indian state has recorded.

Karnataka has held a leading share of national FDI for over a decade, driven by its dominance in IT services, biotech, and electronics manufacturing centred on Bengaluru. The current government's pitch is that it is not merely sustaining that lead but accelerating it through a structured policy framework.

Industrial Policy 2025–30 and the e-Khata shift

Central to that framework is the Industrial Policy 2025–30, which the CMO says has now been brought into force. The policy sets the state's investment and employment targets for the coming five years and is intended to provide predictability for both domestic and foreign investors.

Running alongside it is the e-Khata system — a digital platform that converts property records into electronic form. The move targets a chronic pain point in Karnataka's land administration: disputed ownership titles that have historically delayed both household transactions and industrial land acquisition. By digitising records, the government aims to reduce the friction that has long shadowed property dealings across the state.

The sixth guarantee: Bhu-Guarantee for property ownership

The post also announces a Bhu-Guarantee (ಭೂ-ಗ್ಯಾರಂಟಿ) — described as the sixth guarantee to the people of Karnataka — aimed at freeing citizens from confusion over property ownership. The Karnataka Congress government rolled out five major welfare guarantees in 2023 covering women, youth, and farmers. The addition of a sixth, focused on land-title clarity, extends that welfare architecture into the domain of property rights.

The post closes with six explicit commitments: youth must find employment; farmers must prosper; women must become self-reliant; children must be educated; workers must live with dignity; and senior citizens must have secure lives. It is, in effect, the government's own scorecard — the metrics against which it is inviting the public to judge the investment push.

A development model on public trial

What makes this Independence Day statement notable is the deliberate threading together of two narratives that state governments often keep separate — the investor-facing story of FDI and approvals, and the citizen-facing story of guarantees and welfare. By presenting them as a single programme with a single purpose, the CMO is making an explicit political argument: that industrial growth and social equity are not in tension in Karnataka, but are two faces of the same project.

The proof, as the government itself implies, will come in the rollout milestones of the Industrial Policy 2025–30, the pace of e-Khata coverage, and — most critically — the job numbers that eventually emerge from those 945 approved proposals.