What’s at stake for Cong, BJP in Karnataka contest

As the Karnataka assembly elections 2018 are set to be held on May 12, the political battle shifts from the east (three northeastern states had polls in February) and the north (bypolls were held in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in March) to the south.

But it is not just the shift in geography which makes the battle for Bengaluru important. It is a battle which will, in many ways, determine the political balance of power for 2019.

Here is why Karnataka matters. For the Congress, this is almost an existential battle. The party is reduced to power in only three states — Punjab, Mizoram and Karnataka. A loss will erode Rahul Gandhi’s credibility as soon as he has taken over as the Congress president. It will devastate the cadre and leave them with a sense that 2019 is a lost cause. It will leave the party without power in the south (barring Puducherry) — which remains the final unconquered bastion for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

And most crucially, it will deprive the party of resources for subsequent elections at the end of the year and in 2019. It is an open secret that power in any state, especially one which has a strong politics-economy nexus in a range of sectors like Karnataka, lends itself to rent-seeking behaviour. And the fact is that Congress needs money which can come with power.

A win, on the other hand, will boost party morale, give a sense of revival to the leadership and the workers, energise the entire opposition, and give a sense that the BJP juggernaut can be halted. This is crucial as the Congress heads to three elections where it is in direct contest with the BJP — Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan — at the end of the year.

For the BJP, Bengaluru matters precisely because it is central to the ‘Congress-mukt Bharat’ political project.

It matters so that the Congress does not have much political or financial cushion to take on the BJP — which is facing severe anti-incumbency in the three other states heading for polls.

Karnataka also matters for the BJP because a win will reverse the slide, for the party is emerging from a string of bypoll losses in UP, Bihar, MP, Rajasthan.

The growing conventional wisdom in Delhi’s political circles is that 2019 is not 2014, and that the Modi wave may have dissipated. A win in Karnataka will reinforce the BJP’s dominance and help counter the perception that it has already peaked.

For the BJP, the state also matters because while the party has broken its older image of being just a north Indian party (by expanding in the northeast), an upper-caste party (by winning the support of backward and Dalit groups) and an urban outfit (by doing well in rural areas), it has not been able to make inroads into the south.

Indeed, there appears to be rising concern in the south at what are perceived as BJP’s attempts to impose cultural or linguistic uniformity. Policy issues like the terms of reference for the Fifteenth finance commission have generated concerns in the south that the balance of political and fiscal power is shifting to the north entirely.

For the BJP, a win in Karnataka will help quell the perception that it is anti-south, and give it a staging ground to expand in other pockets of the region.

Two hundred and twenty-four seats will go to polls in Karnataka. In the outcome of each assembly seat will lie not just the future of the state’s citizens, but the fortunes of India’s two major national parties and the balance of power between them as the country heads to 2019.