NEXT ELECTORAL CHALLENGE: INDIA’S CHANGING POLITICAL EQUATIONS
Assembly elections in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat are over. Another set of state elections is due in 2018. Business Standard reporters assess the next round of the electoral challenge and how it could change India’s political equations
Which better caste combination?
Scheduled for April, the Karnataka election campaign is already underway. A Congress government headed by Siddaramaiah, former leader from the Deve Gowda-led Janata Dal (S), is fighting for another term. The main challenge is led by B S Yeddyurappa, a former chief minister, once imprisoned briefly on a graft charge. Yeddyurappa has already been named as chief minister (CM) if his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) should come to power. Siddaramaiah’s pluses? An excellent orator, from the Kuruba (shepherd) community which is socially and economically backward. This gives him the sort of appeal enjoyed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The downside? Not a collegial leader, strongly antiintellectual and doesn’t seem to notice corruption.
Karnataka is a mini country, with all the contradictions and asymmetries. After the information technology revolution, Bengaluru is the hub of all that is creative but the city has next to no urban planning and is growing at a pace the government can’t keep up with. In Mandya, wealthy cotton farmers are committed to the JD (S); in arid north Karnataka and coastal Karnataka, the BJP has a base. The state has an assertive and vigorous minority population; one of the largest contingents of kar
sevaks during the demolition of the Babri Masjid came from Karnataka.
The real politics is in caste coalitions. In the previous election, the Congress came to power on the back of a carefully wrought combination of some Vokkaligas, some Lingayats (both powerful middle castes) and mainly because of the support of Dalits and Muslims. This time, Yeddyurappa is working furiously to make dents in the Dalit vote. He has criss-crossed the state twice already, eating at Dalit households, holding meetings with them and generally trying to win them over. However, he has acknowledged detractors in his own party, who have made no secret of the fact that they will work to contain him. The BJP’s biggest danger is internal sabotage.