MODI’S SOUTHERN COUP
THE BJP’S POSITIVE PERFORMANCE IN KARNATAKA HAS PAVED THE WAY FOR MODI AND THE PARTY TO DEEPEN THEIR PENETRATION IN THE SOUTH, AND COUNTERMAND ANY LOSSES IN THE NORTH IN THE 2019 LOK SABHA ELECTION
Will Karnataka be the BJP’s gateway to the south in the run-up to 2019?
IT
WAS THE PENULTIMATE day of campaigning in Karnataka and the indefatigable Narendra Modi had packed in as many public rallies as he could address. His first meeting of the day began at 10.30 am at Bangarpet, once the urban hub of the famed Kolar Gold Fields. The mines have long been since defunct, but Modi knew how to work the crowd. “Kolar was once the king of gold mines in India,” he said. “But now you have emerged as the raja of mangoes, silk and milk.” As the crowd roared in appreciation of this recognition, the Prime Minister, and prime campaigner for his party, assured them that if they voted for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he would ensure that the district would become the mango capital of the country by providing irrigation to expand production and rail connectivity to
market their produce.
It was Modi’s charisma and ability to connect with the audience (despite having his speech in Hindi translated into Kannada), backed by party president Amit Shah’s meticulous constituency-level strategy, that proved to be the game-changer in the Karnataka election. Modi addressed 21 rallies across the states in the final week of the campaign and pollsters acknowledge it boosted BJP votes, giving it the advantage over the ruling Congress. The BJP emerged as the single largest party in the state winning 104 seats, but fell eight short a simple majority of 112 needed to form a government on its own. (The state has 224 assembly seats but elections for two seats have been deferred till the end of May.)
Modi must have been disappointed that the BJP’s final tally fell short of the party’s expectation of 130 seats. But in his victory speech at the spanking new BJP headquarters in New Delhi, the prime minister appeared confident of winning the vote of confidence and forming the government in the southern state despite the fractured verdict, promising that “the
BJP will never let the development of Karnataka be affected”. He admitted that he was apprehensive about the language barrier while addressing campaign rallies in the state, but was glad to see that it was unfounded. He triumphantly added, “A perception was created in the country by the opposition that the BJP is a party of North India—a part of only Hindispeaking states. The people of Karnataka have given a fitting response to parties that seek to divide us on these (North-South) lines.”
Capturing power in Karnataka, an industrially prosperous and internationally influential state, is critical to BJP’s Mission South. Karnataka has the second largest economy in the south, next only to Tamil Nadu, and the fourth largest in the country, behind only Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Moreover, the state was the last big bastion of the Congress. It not only gave the grand old party a foothold in the south but was also considered to have the monetary clout to fund the party’s revival. As Modi mocked, “Without Karnataka, the Congress would be reduced to the 3 Ps—Punjab, Puducherry and Parivar.” The other concern was that a defeat in Karnataka would have signalled a decline in Modi’s popularity and have had a domino effect on the party’s prospects in the BJP-ruled states of Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh where assembly polls are due later in the year. In these states, the Congress and the BJP are locked in straight fights.
The main reason, though, for the battle royale was that the wily Shah regards Karnataka as the party’s “gateway to the South”. Together, the five southern states—Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala—and the Union territory of Puducherry—account for 130 of the 545 Lok Sabha seats. Currently, the BJP has only a paltry 21 seats, its largest presence being in Karnataka, with 17 seats. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, in which the BJP won 282 seats, the North Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan contributed 167 seats or 59 per cent of the total. The BJP may not be able to repeat its 2014 performance in several of the seats. So the party hopes to make good in the South to offset the losses in the Hindi belt and elsewhere.
The southern assault is a game plan that the Modi-Shah duo have been working on since the NDA assumed office in 2014. While Shah’s mastery is in steering polling booth-level networks, Modi has assiduously built an enduring connect, with a panIndian appeal, a combination that musters a better voter-to-seat conversion given that its support base is concentrated constituency-wise. This was especially evident in the Karnataka election results where, despite having polled two per cent less of the total votes than the Congress, the BJP won substantially more seats than its rival (see Pulling Out All the Stops). Both Modi and Shah have sensed that the nuances for each southern state have to be distinct given their political past and the relative strength of the BJP vis-a-vis the dominant parties in that state, except in Karnataka where it was the single largest party in 2004, and had formed a government in 2008.
In 2019, the BJP hopes to win at least 65 or half the total seats the South has to offer. Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana are the three high-priority states planned for the party’s strategic growth. The organisational expansion in these states, along with Modi demonstrating his effectiveness as a pan-India campaigner with wins in Assam and Tripura apart from Karnataka, are reasons for the BJP to be sanguine. In Karnataka, the BJP is confident of capitalising on the outcome of the Karnataka assembly poll. The rapturous response Modi received from crowds wherever he campaigned gives the party hope that it will increase its Lok Sabha tally in the state. “In no two states will our strategy be similar and we may not win the first ever Lok Sabha seat from Kerala this time, but tactful alliances and shrewd seat-sharing will make us the only truly national party now that we have almost achieved Congress-mukt Bharat,” a senior BJP leader claims.
Soon after the campaign ended in Karnataka, Shah named Kanna Lakshminarayana as the party president in Andhra Pradesh. Though a relative newcomer to the BJP, he has impressive credentials—he has been a five-time Congress MLA from the Kapu community that constitutes
CAPTURING POWER IN KARNATAKA IS CRITICAL TO BJP’S MISSION SOUTH. MOREOVER, THE STATE WAS THE LAST BIG BASTION OF THE CONGRESS
about 27 per cent of the population. The ex-minister joined the BJP after losing his deposit on the Congress ticket in the 2014 assembly election. Realpolitik compulsions prompted the BJP to pick him despite rumblings within the state unit of the party. Lakshminarayana can rally the Kapu community and the OBCs given his background and work the lines as well for an enduring alliance with the YSR Congress led by Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy (his father Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy made Laksminarayana a minister for the first time). The YSR Congress is the only option for the BJP to have a preor post-poll alliance with as its 2014 allies—the Telugu Desam Party of N. Chandrababu Naidu and the Jana Sena Party of Pawan Kalyan—have drifted away. Lakshminarayana, a fierce critic of Naidu, is capable of mounting a strident campaign against him and could strike a good bargain in a pre-poll alliance with Jaganmohan. The TDP is on the defensive already, anticipating a possible witch hunt against Naidu. Its leaders fear the BJP may target him with corruption charges. Given his quest for power in the state, an embattled Jagan is certain to give the BJP more than the five Lok Sabha and 15 assembly constituencies the TDP gave it to contest. (The BJP won two Lok Sabha and four assembly seats.)
In neighbouring Telangana, having inducted Dr K. Lakshman as the state party president, the BJP has erased the image of being Reddydriven in an OBC-dominated state. It has adopted a three-pronged strategy to strengthen the party from the polling booth to state level like it did in Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka. “Amit Shah introduced this organisational structure after he became president and we have it fully in place in 60 of the 119 assembly constituencies,” says Lakshman. The party is likely to go it alone rather than seek allies to ensure a definitive three-way
split of votes between itself, the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi and the Congress, which is the principal opposition party.
In Tamil Nadu, with the factions of the ruling AIADMK, in the absence of its towering leader J. Jayalalithaa, bowing to the BJP’s command, their electoral alliance is inevitable. They have been allies in the past but the plan is to pursue a concerted effort to put up a cohesive show. Superstar Rajinikanth’s party, to be launched in June, is likely to be a pre- or post-poll ally. RSS ideologue S. Gurumurthy, a staunch proponent of an alliance with the actor-turning-politician, believes it can be a formidable one. Significantly, the actor’s Rajini Makkal Manram, ostensibly a grouping of his fans, is being developed and cultivated for concentrated campaigning on the lines of the BJP’s booth management strategy to ensure better vote-to-seat conversion. In effect, they will double as the foot-soldiers of the BJP once the swap ratio of Lok Sabha and assembly constituencies between itself and the state level allies is decided.
In Kerala, Shah is planning a Tripura-like political coup to ensure that the lotus blooms in God’s Own Country. With a 15.2 per cent vote share in the state, the BJP may not be an immediate threat to the CPI(M) or the Congress but Shah knows how to work the maths and discussed his strategy with state party president Kummanam Rajashekharan and organising secretary N. Ganesh a day before the Karnataka election results. According to party insiders, Shah is targeting five Lok Sabha seats in a state where the BJP has yet to open its account. “We are in an upbeat mood. The Karnataka results are motivating and compel us to do more for our party in Kerala,” says K. Surendran, the state general secretary of the BJP.
The BJP in Kerala is banking not just on the Hindu vote to make its debut. It is also wooing Christians who constitute 19.2 per cent of the state’s population. Alphonse Kannanthanam was inducted into the Union cabinet recently despite resistance from the Kerala leadership with an eye to establish a rapport with the churches in Kerala. Now Alphonse is working BATTLE LOST
The C ongress president failed to demonstrate that he can be a formidable prime ministerial challenge hard to rope the churches in the lotus fold one by one.
Meanwhile, the Congress and its party president Rahul Gandhi have plenty to learn from their loss in Karnataka. The party’s strategy of going it alone instead of striking an alliance with the Janata Dal (Secular), proved disastrous (see Now or Never). But adversity has given rise to opportunity, or rather an opportunistic alliance, with the JD(S) and the Congress forming a post-poll alliance to stake claim to form the government in Karnataka. With the Congress winning 78 seats and the JD(S)-BSP another 38 seats, they together have 116 seats, a simple majority. If they are able to effectively combine their forces, it may sow the seed of a larger opposition alliance across the country to take on the BJP in 2019 and challenge its dominance. But it will take more than just a ganging up of anti-BJP parties to stop the Modi-Shah juggernaut. After Karnataka, it’s advantage BJP by a sizeable distance.
THE CONGRESS STRATEGY OF
GOING IT ALONE IN KARNATAKA RATHER THAN ALLYING WITH THE JD(S) PROVED TO BE DISASTROUS FOR THE PARTY