EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Ayear ago, the Congress party seemed to be galloping towards extinction. The media was awash with obituaries, marking nature’s law that those who couldn’t adapt would perish. As election after election brought dire news. The worst was Uttar Pradesh in March and Gujarat in December, bracketing 2022. The party itself seemed to breathe in the negativity. Victory in tiny Himachal Pradesh appeared like the lamp in hell that only made the ‘darkness visible’. Karnataka, one of India’s major states, turns that perception upside down. Now that the post-victory jockeying for the CM’s post is settled with minimum blood loss, one can look back in totality at the most significant electoral triumph the Congress has pulled off in recent times—only Chhattisgarh in 2018 yielded a bigger vote and seat share. In Karnataka, the party’s last such triumph came in 1989. That it happened in a direct fight with the BJP, for whom the stakes were high as it sought to breach the whole peninsula via Karnataka, enhances the symbolism. The architects are a well-known duo. The new chief minister, Siddaramaiah, is a blunt-spoken man of the masses, toughened in the furnace, with a pan-Karnataka appeal and proven administrative record. A socialist from the Janata stock, once seen as an heir to the likes of former chief ministers S.R. Bommai and H.D. Deve Gowda, he had switched to the Congress about the time when, under Sonia Gandhi, it too was coincidentally taking a welfare-socialist turn. The other half of the duo is D.K. Shivakumar, a strategist, strongman and fierce Congress loyalist amid Karnataka’s swampy casteridden politics from his days as a student leader in the 1980s. His appointment as state party chief in 2020 was a key turning point, as he pulled out what was dubbed “the Kamaraj Plan”. Known to play a tight game based on “accurate intelligence”, he also knows when to bend after driving a hard bargain, as he showed in the recent battle for the top post, Along with them is a third Kannadiga stalwart: Mallikarjun Kharge. His elevation as AICC president added a resonant string to the Congress bow. Accounting for the ‘Ahinda’ umbrella, the Vokkaligas and a specific Dalit swing between them, they formed the demolition squad that vanquished the BJP. A 43 per cent vote share spread across a complex community map, with seats in all six regions—how did the Congress pull this off? That’s the inside track we flesh out in this week’s three-part cover story, with Group Editorial Director Raj Chengappa and Associate Editor Ajay Sukumaran filtering the sea of information from Karnataka and Executive Editor Kaushik Deka plugged into the Delhi end. The story begins about two years ago, during Covid. A party everyone believed to be comatose quietly set about watering itself at the roots, plotting a comeback. They took a leaf from the BJP playbook, creating a detailed, meticulously planned blueprint. All boxes were ticked and all circles were squared. For a change, method prevailed over vague good intentions. Behind the stage, a corps of coordinators and strategists burnt the midnight oil in a systematic, research-driven study of people’s problems. Field surveys brought real-time feedback about the issues on the ground: this went into evolving a ‘Five Guarantee’ manifesto that evidently touched genuine felt needs. And because a plan guided all action and speech, what could have been a comedic three-legged race at the top turned out to be a happy synergy. The BJP sowed the seeds of its own disaster as it began to trip on the basics. The internal rift worsened an image sullied by corruption charges and non-delivery. The passage from veteran B.S. Yediyurappa to Basavaraj Bommai, the nightwatchman who batted more than expected, made no difference. The memory of flood waters sinking the poshest parts of Bengaluru, high prices, particularly of gas cylinders, and the “40 per cent” taint created a strong wave of anti-incumbency that sank the BJP boat. For a change, the Congress quickly spotted the chinks in the armour and chipped away at them. The ‘PayCM’ and ‘gas cylinder puja’ campaigns hit the BJP where it hurt as it struggled to keep its vaunted image of efficiency afloat despite some development showpieces and “five crore beneficiaries” of central and state schemes.
Last October, Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra entered Karnataka, cutting a swathe through 500-plus kilometres across seven districts. It spun some of its most photogenic moments there, including the famous speech in pouring rain in Mysuru that the party’s social media apparatchiks made viral. The passage reenergised a cadre long used to being in spiritless drift. This new sense of purpose, direction and fire in the belly came at just the right time in the battle—that supercharged infantry ran all over a floundering BJP. Tactically, the ‘vocal for local’ approach focused on things Kannadigas related to, like the Nandini-Amul controversy, and away from the Modi-centric game the BJP preferred. The BJP blundered in trying to scale the battle up to its favoured Hindu nationalist pitch in ways that did not fit the local idiom or temper. Themes like Bajrang Bali and internal caste reservation actually swivelled around to benefit the Congress. While the likes of J.P. Nadda, Yogi Adityanath and Himanta Biswa Sarma hit the campaign trail along with Modi-Shah for the BJP, the Congress kept it very Kannadiga, only topping up with sparing use of Rahul-Priyanka. Also, they applied methodical principles in their candidate selection, and the first list of 124 was announced a clear month and a half before polling. A few key Lingayat rebels filled in the gaps left tactically open. It was a role reversal that saw Congress ‘do a BJP on BJP’. Now comes the more challenging job. Karnataka has to be governed. The five guarantees will cost about Rs 50,000 crore— nearly 20 per cent of a budget already burdened with a Rs 60,581 crore fiscal deficit. The Congress may look at Karnataka as a harbinger of good tidings in the four states due for polls next. But that’s easier said than done. This model can’t be replicated so simply in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh or Telangana. In the first two, the Congress goes in as the incumbent; in Rajasthan, the burden is doubled by an unseemly power squabble between Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot. Plus, Hindutva plays out more organically in the north. Undoubtedly, the win has put some vim and vigour in the Grand Old Party ahead of 2024. Success breeds success, they say. But past success meant nothing for Congress in 2019 in the general election when the BJP increased its tally despite Congress winning three state elections in 2018. Prime Minister Narendra Modi still has it in him to prove old proverbs wrong. Those who discount him do so at their peril.