The last of the Mohicans

On Tuesday morning, a Congress leader privately argued against a Centre for Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) poll that predicted an edge for his party in perhaps the toughest election to call till date in Karnataka.

Even given the reticence common in his party, the doubts he aired about the Congress’s performance in general and the Chief Minister Siddaramiah in particular hardly left room for ambivalence. From what I could make out, wise men in the Congress are already preparing to haul the Chief Minister over the coals if the party fails to get a majority in the Karnataka Assembly.

He counted, with barely suppressed vehemence, the innumerable mistakes committed by Siddaramiah — be it the move to give minority status to Lingayats which seems to be backfiring with the community consolidating completely behind the BJP or “foisting” JD(S) MLAs such as Akhand Srinivas Murthy in Pulkeshinagar which have damaged the Congress’s chances to win this seat in Bengaluru and “alienating” the “Yajamanru” — former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda.

Deve Gowda, the kingmaker

Deve Gowda, on his part, was just as voluble. And quite like his friends in the Congress whom he qualified as “the Old Guard”, Deve Gowda had a clear target — Siddaramiah. The socialist veteran was at his eloquent best when he elaborated on Siddaramiah’s career graph. “Who is he? What is he? He was my crony,” said Deve Gowda, as he gleefully narrated an incident that involved former Chief Minister JH Patel physically attacking Siddaramiah at Karnataka Bhavan in Delhi.

Deve Gowda, in his perceived capacity as the “kingmaker” in case of a widely predicted hung Assembly in Karnataka, declared that he would “disown” his son HD Kumaraswamy if he ties up with the BJP. What the JD(S) veteran was clearly keener on was an alliance with the Congress without Siddaramiah. “Congress itself is waiting to throw Siddaramiah out,” Deve Gowda said. From the intensity of emotion and the mind-space he occupies within his party and from the rivals alike, Siddaramiah is clearly the lone leader at the pole against whom the rest of the political players are arraigned.

Siddaramiah vs the rest

In an ironical replay of the Narendra Modi-versus-the rest narrative at the national level, Siddaramiah is decidedly the centrifugal force that dominates Karnataka. A CSDS-Lokniti opinion poll finds startling similarities between the levels of popular satisfaction with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Siddaramiah’s performance at the national and state level. About 29 and 23 per cent of the respondents in this poll were “fully satisfied” with Siddaramiah and Modi respectively and the Chief Minister, like the PM, continues to be the most popular choice to return to office.

From this contrast unfold the granular details of an election where the BJP President Amit Shah has gathered his flock of former Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa with the strongest claim over Lingayats, who form about 18 per cent of the electorate, and B Sriramalu, who represents not just the powerful Valmiki STs but is also the protégé of mining baron and former BJP minister Gali Janardana Reddy. Sriramalu and Yeddyurappa had contested independently in the 2013 Assembly elections and cornered a vote share of 2.69 and 9.79 per cent respectively.

They were welcomed back into the BJP in the 2014 general elections and have been put again to work in the Assembly polls to influence the significant Lingayat and ST communities in the BJP’s favour.

Simultaneously, the RSS had unleashed, according to local estimates, over 50,000 activists in the State for “man-to-man marking” in the last two weeks of the campaign. The social media handles of the BJP’s local stalwarts — Shobha Karandlaje, Anant Kumar Hegde et al — have been spouting a staunch Hindutva line. And the crowning glory is the PM’s high-voltage campaign that has overwhelmed the voters in States as diverse as Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Assam where the BJP has repeatedly tasted success in Assembly elections.

On its own the Congress, unlike the Grand Alliance in Bihar or Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi, has proved to be singularly incapable of matching the Amit Shah-Modi blitzkrieg in successive elections.

Regional pride

This is where Siddaramiah emerges in the league of his counterpart and Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh as the few surviving regional satraps in the Congress who can hold their own against the BJP’s war machine. Against Modi and Hindutva, Siddaramiah has packaged a provincial narrative built on Kannadiga chauvinism, State flag and language on the lines of Bihari-versus-Bahri construct coined by Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar in the 2015 Assembly elections.

Simultaneously, he has worked out a caste calculus including minorities, lower OBCs and Dalits which goes by the Kannada acronym of AHINDA.

With just one day to go before the campaign ends, the provincial-versus-national narrative has scripted a cliff-hanger of a contest in Karnataka. The latest opinion poll by CSDS-Lokniti more or less tallies with what I found on the ground during a 10-day election tour to Karnataka. It is that in a lot of segments, particularly in Bengaluru with its 27 seats and coastal Karnataka which has 19 seats, there was a neck-and-neck fight between the Congress and the BJP.

In fact, in coastal Karnataka where the BJP has traditionally done well and communal polarisation is sharper, the Congress seemed to have better candidates and stronger campaign while the BJP was suffering from infighting and bad candidate selection.

The BJP was weak in the Mysuru segment with the fight being largely between the JD(S) and the Congress. The BJP was believed to be doing especially well in Mumbai Karnataka including Bagalkot, Belgaum, Bijapur, Dharwad etc.

A lot would depend on who pushes through the last mile. In Siddaramiah, the Congress at least has a driver with a nerve to race through.

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