Anti-incumbency and widespread reports of corruption by the ruling party members sealed the fate of the BJP in Karnataka. It should do the saffron party some good, that is in case it draws the right lessons from its loss in the only state it held south of the Vindhyas.
As for the Congress, a comeback in Karnataka would boost morale, should encourage the so-called high command to let go and allow the local leaderships to flourish. The credit for the victory actually goes to the local leadership which aggressively exploited the ground-level dissatisfaction with the faction-ridden Bommai Government. The chief minister’s grip both on the party organisation and the government was never strong. He failed to control various power-centers, led by the former Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa.
Even the last-minute gambit to abolish the four percent reservations for Muslims and give it equally to the Lingayats and Gowdas, the two dominant caste groups, seemed to have paid no electoral dividend. Nothing worked for the BJP, not even the strong appeal of Prime Minister Modi who addressed a record number of rallies and attracted large and enthusiastic crowds. There is a cardinal lesson in it for the BJP, that is if it is ready to draw the right lessons. Democratic awareness has so deepened over the years that even an illiterate voter fully knows the difference between the State and parliamentary polls. Modi’s popularity may remain undiminished despite the poor show put up by his party in Karnataka, but with hostile state governments in place his bid for a third term in 2024 may become a little more arduous. For, with the Karnataka win, the Congress will have another source for augmenting its war-chest, hitherto a task imposed on the party-run Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan governments.
Karnataka is a particularly prosperous State with a much higher per capita income than the national average. And in its State party chief, D K Shivakumar, it has a particularly resourceful leader who can tap all manner of sources for fund generation. Which brings us to the tussle over the chief minister’s post. Both Shivakumar and Siddaramaiah, a former chief minister, are contenders. Reverting to the bad old habits and nominating chief ministers from New Delhi may no longer be acceptable to the MLAs, especially when the Gandhis, the so-called high command, had had very little to contribute to the win of the party. The ideal thing will be to allow the newly-elected MLAs to choose their own chief minister through a free but secret vote. Given the margin of the Congress victory, the loser in the race might sulk but will have to accept the majority decision.
It must be mentioned here that Shivakumar, a rich businessman with diverse interests in land, hotel and other sectors, may not be entirely clean but to him must go the credit for managing the campaign well, amplifying the follies and failings of the Bommai government and generally keeping the party machine well-oiled and well-funded. It will be hard to deny him the crown of chief ministership. As for the BJP, it has to re-energise its cadres in the post-Yediyurappa era, stop relying on the Lingayat card too much, and atone for its acts of omission and commission while in power. Voters are not fools. Modi magic may be all right to win the party the parliamentary poll but it cannot be enough to ensure success in each and every provincial election. The party needs to groom strong State leaderships. For example, notice the way Yogi Adityanath has emerged a leader in his own right in UP, sweeping the local bodies elections whose results too were declared on Saturday. In the by-election caused by the death of the Congress MP from Jalandhar in Punjab, the APP candidate defeated his widow by nearly 60,000 votes in a four-cornered contest with the Akali-BSP combine and the BJP candidates drawing over one lakh votes each.
Significantly, federalism is strengthened, and not weakened, when different parties rule at the Centre and the states. The so-called double-engine and triple-engine sarkar has a limited appeal for the voter. In a way, it may be good for the BJP that the Congress has received a boost, thus allowing the Gandhis to believe that they still have charisma to swing the country their way. The more Rahul Gandhi becomes assertive, the more the rest of the Opposition squirms – and the more the BJP feels enthused. Whether or not it was correct to try and establish an equivalence between the Bajrang Dal and the Popular Front of India, the fact remains that Karnataka voter was so determined to oust BJP that the egregious idea to club the two together did not seem to matter.
