Tough lessons for Cong, BJP; JD(S) shines in caste calculations

The results of the Karnataka elections reflect a strong anti-incumbency vote. The rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is bound to keep the focus on itself and what it did to emerge as the single largest party in an election that had been expected to be closer than what it finally turned out to be.

Is the unusually aggressive tone the PM adopted for the campaign a sign of the new normal? Yet any interpretation of the outcome as a mandate for the BJP would have to be tempered with the fact that the Janata Dal (Secular) by and large has held its own. This would suggest that the vote was against the Congress with the beneficiaries tending to vary depending on the major local opponent of that party.

The main lessons of an anti-incumbency vote are usually for those who have been voted against. With Congress president Rahul Gandhi failing to win another election on his own, there will be further scepticism about his ability to lead the party to power in 2019. The main victim of this vote would, however, clearly be Siddaramaiah. Many Congress leaders who have bided their time over the last five years can be expected to move quickly to isolate him politically.

The more difficult lessons would be for Siddaramaiah’s welfare programmes.

The most successful of these programmes, such as the scheme for virtually free rice, or Anna Bhagya, as well as the Indira canteens, made a frontal attack on hunger. The vote is a clear statement that no matter how important it is for a society to be hunger-free, the hungry in present-day Karnataka are not large enough in numbers to make a difference to the results of an election.

The Congress will also have to decipher what this vote means for its commitment to Ahinda, the Kannada acronym for the alliance of minorities, backward castes and Dalits. The results clearly point to Ahinda leading to a counter consolidation of the dominant castes against the Congress. The party did try to soften the blow by trying to appeal to the less economically successful among the Lingayats. Congress leaders, including Rahul Gandhi, provided a prominent place for Basavanna, the 12thcentury Lingayat philosopher and social reformer, in their campaign, the government wrote to the Centre to give the followers of his ideas the status of a separate Lingayat religion. But the strategy did not get the Lingayats to their side and may have weakened the party’s hold over the backward castes and Dalits.

The lessons for the BJP are no less important. The election campaign provided a prominent place for three different groups in the party.

BS Yeddyurappa, having brought the Lingayats along, will demand his place at the top of any arrangement the BJP arrives at. Ananth Kumar Hegde will seek an affirmation of aggressive, possibly even violent, Hindutva. And at the more pragmatic end of the scale, the Reddy brothers can insist that the results prove that their methods are no less effective than that of the others. The central leadership of the BJP will have to find methods of balancing the three very different interests, if they are not to have a repeat of their previous stint in power in Karnataka which saw three BJP chief ministers.

The most pleasant lessons are, however, reserved for the Janata Dal (Secular).

Before this election, it had reduced itself to a party dominated by a single family appealing largely to a single caste. And with the family also providing some public displays of disaffection, the party was on the verge of being pushed into irrelevance.

The results have demonstrated that the party is able to not only retain its hold over the Vokkaligas but also add on potential winners discarded by other parties.

More importantly, the JD(S) appears to have come up with a strategy that is consistent with it being a Vokkaliga party.

Its alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in this election brings up the possibility of linking up with the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. The party also had an alliance with the Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen (MIM) which may not have had too great an influence in this election, but could hold electoral promise for the future.

The JD(S) appears to have decided that the way forward lies in making deals with other caste- and religionbased parties rather than seeking to absorb these groups within a Vokkaliga-dominated party.

It will be hoping that as the Congress faces greater difficulties in keeping conflicting caste and religious groups within it, the JD(S) way of alliances could see it make further inroads into Congress territory.