BjP's victory in Karnataka Polls - Alarm bells for the Congress

The News International
June 03, 2008

Alarm bells for the Congress

by Praful Bidwai

Nothing seems to be going right for India's Congress-led ruling coalition, which has recently suffered a series of election reverses in 11 states, including Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Himachal and Uttarakhand. Now, the Bharatiya Janata Party has defeated it in the Karnataka Assembly elections to rule a Southern state for the first time. The outcome is a huge morale-booster for Hindutva, and a source of despondency for the Congress.

The Karnataka result is a setback for secularism. But, ironically, it's unlikely, as we see below, to produce a breakthrough for the BJP in other Southern states. Yet, it highlights the Congress's decline and leadership crisis, and ought to jolt it into radical course correction.

The BJP won 110 out of the Assembly's 224 seats not because people believed it can provide better governance, but because it ran a highly focused campaign and got its caste/social group arithmetic right. This was centred on the Lingayats in the North and a clutch of mainly upper-caste groups in the Southern coastal region.

Besides consolidating this old base, the BJP gained in central Karnataka and Bangalore, where it won 17 of 28 seats because successive Congress-led governments have messed up the city.

The BJP presented itself as a united and cohesive organisation, with a clearly identified leader (B S Yeddyurappa). He got sympathy because he had been unfairly dumped by the small Janata Dal (Secular) from a power-sharing arrangement.

The Congress ran a lacklustre campaign, and failed to project a leader from among many contenders with clashing identities. The JD (S) couldn't overcome the stigma of rank opportunism and venality, and lost 30 of its 58 seats.

The Congress was on the defensive because of rising prices, in addition to longer-term disadvantages related to the agrarian crisis and unemployment. The BJP cynically exploited the Jaipur bombings in the communally charged atmosphere of Karnataka, which recently witnessed terrorist blasts.

The BJP also gained from divisions in the secular vote between the Congress and JD (S) in a three-way contest. Its current aggregate vote (33.9 percent) is lower than the Congress's 34.6 percent, but it won 30 more seats than the Congress. That's because the BJP's vote is concentrated in pockets; the Congress's is more evenly spread.

However, it simply won't do to underrate the BJP's great long-term gains from its strategy of communally polarising Karnataka--by laying a Hindu claim to the syncretic-Sufi Baba Budangiri shrine in Chikmagalur, fomenting violence in Mangalore, Belgaum and Hubli (on the Idgah maidan issue), drumming up hysteria on false allegations of cow slaughter, and resort to hate speech and hate crimes, well-documented by the Karnataka Communal Harmony Forum.

It's no accident that Narendra Modi was the BJP's star campaigner, or that Yeddyurappa has a staunch RSS background.

Communalism has long been an important factor in the BJP's dramatic growth in Karnataka, from 4 percent of the vote and 4 Assembly seats in 1989, to 28 percent and 79 seats in 2004. The Congress has never confronted the BJP on communalism, or questioned its lack of pluralism and inclusiveness.

What's the true significance of the Karnataka results? The BJP's win there is unlikely to open the road to victory in Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The politics of these states is dominated by two parties/coalitions.

Karnataka is the only Southern state where the main non-Congress political space was occupied by the Right-wing Congress (O) in the late 1960s, and later, the Janata Party and its fragments. In the other states, that space was taken by secular regional parties--DMK, AIADMK, Telugu Desam, etc--and in Kerala, by the Left.

The Janata legacy facilitated the BJP's entry into Karnataka. Such conditions don't exist in the other Southern states. Nor does Karnataka have any special political links with them. The Karnataka victory may be a one-off affair.

Indeed, as an analyst using Election Commission data has argued, the peculiar distribution of the BJP's vote in Karnataka will work against it in the national elections. If all the Assembly segments vote in the next Lok Sabha elections exactly as they did now, the BJP will win only 10 of Karnataka's 28 seats, down from 18. The Congress would soar from 8 to 14.

This won't be a breakthrough even in Karnataka, leave alone the South.

The Karnataka election's true significance lies in the grim message it carries for the Congress on top of its recent election defeats. Which is that the Congress/UPA may become remarkably unpopular and face the prospect of a rout in the next Lok Sabha election unless it urgently takes thoroughgoing, comprehensive and radical measures to reform itself--as distinct from piecemeal, cosmetic and half-hearted ones.

The Congress faces multiple crises, three of which are crucially important. First, there's a crisis of political strategy. This lies in the party's inability to garner mass support and run an efficient electoral machine while articulating a vision for society, based on programmes and policies.

The Congress no longer works at the grassroots. It doesn't quite know what it stands for, what constitutes its social base or constituencies, and what message it should deliver to them. Nor does it know how to demolish the case the opposition makes against it. It's not good enough to have a few clever spokespersons who can turn and twist words. The Congress needs leaders and cadres who speak with conviction.

Second, the Congress faces an organisational crisis. In part, this consists in a severe lack of coordination among party leaders; and in part, in the absence of mass following of a majority of central-level Congress leaders, who have rarely faced a popular election. A severe manifestation of this crisis is the mis-assignment of leaders to functions they aren't capable of or interested in.

In Karnataka, the BJP practised careful micromanagement of constituencies, with targeted canvassing and excellent coordination between its district leaders as well as RSS members under Arun Jaitley, who camped in the state for six weeks.

By contrast, the Congress's coordinators barely spent any time in Karnataka, and didn't project a united image of the party. There was no accountability, no pressure to show results.

Finally, there's the leadership crisis. The Congress cannot countenance a democratic elected leadership independent of the Nehru-Gandhi family. But it rarely gathers the courage to call this leadership to account when it loses.

The Congress has understood that coalition politics is inevitable. But it doggedly resists another aspect of the same phenomenon--letting strong autonomous regional leaders emerge. It doesn't know how to project its leaders except in a dynastic mould, without subjecting them to a results-based test of credibility.

Unless the Congress boldly and honestly confronts these crises, it cannot resolve them. Ultimately, the corrective measures it takes must be related to policies and programmes.

The Congress should know: it's not enough to pass the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. It has to be accompanied by mobilisation of the state and party machineries, and a high-powered public awareness campaign which alone can prevent large-scale corruption and the scheme's sabotage.



The writer, a former newspaper editor, is a researcher and peace and human-rights activist based in Delhi. Email: prafulbidwai1@yahoo.co.in