If there is one welcome outcome from the fast-moving political developments in Karnataka, it is the arrival of a young professional leadership in the Congress. It had learned the lessons from Goa, Manipur and Assam and was not to be outwitted by the BJP again.
For the first time, the Congress kept one step ahead of the saffron party, checkmating it at every level in Karnataka. Political parties have hailed the defeat of the Yeddyurappa interlude as a victory for the Supreme Court, which intervened effectively, not once but twice. But this miraculous intervention was possible only because of the alertness of the Congress.
The battle for Karnataka may prove a turning point for India. Clearly, no more will elections be one-sided affair. Gujarat had given a hint of this. Karnataka has confirmed that under Gandhi the Congress is rejuvenated. The fierce campaigning had hardly prepared us for the post-election drama. The Tamil Nadu experience when AIADMK legislators were held in captivity for several days in a hideaway to forestall poaching by rival groups appeared kids’ stuff compared to what happened in Bengaluru. Here, a chief minister who had yet to prove his majority used the police to get across to rival legislators and prevent them from leaving the capital. This was an extraordinary step but did not get the condemnation it deserved, because more mindboggling events were taking place!
The onus now is on the Congress, which must work the coalition with the Janata Dal (Secular). Both parties get their primary support from the same political base and are ideologically aligned. But both will find the burdens of the past relationship challenging to shed. Outgoing chief minister, Siddaramaiah’s troubled relations with the JD (S) patriarch Deve Gowda, had prevented the two parties from reaching an electoral arrangement to keep the BJP at bay. The two ran rival campaigns, in some constituencies pitting one against the other. The bitterness of the campaign may not be easy to forget.
The Congress knows that the emerging leaders may need to be given the responsibility of managing affairs in the coalition. A former socialist and himself an old JD (S) leader with a clean record as a chief minister, Siddaramaiah perhaps made too many enemies. He cultivated his constituency of middle and lower-middle-class voters through several popular schemes, including own version of Jayalalithaa’s Amma Canteen. But his one primary weapon of offering to try and get a separate religion status to the powerful Lingayats in the State, did not fetch him votes. The results showed that the Congress suffered severe reverses in the southern districts, a stronghold of the Vokkaligas a majority of whom stood with the JD (S). The coastal region, cultivated by the BJP with its communal campaign went with the saffron party. The BJP also gained in the Bombay Karnataka region where the Congress lost ground. In
a period of consolidation, the party may look to moneyed leaders like D K Shivakumar to regain the political initiative.
Chief Minister Kumaraswamy begins with a fund of goodwill among the regional leaders around the country. Kumaraswamy has also taken the right steps to mend fences with the Congress. The hope among the two coalition partners must be that the tie-up will weather all obstacles if only because of the burden of carrying so much of the national political weight and hope.
