It seems the Congress has a credible national face at last. A trouble shooter who has negotiated the complexities of Opposition politics, which it badly needs, especially after it couldn’t get its Rajya Sabha nominee in Jharkhand through. Last week, a masterclass in the difference between rhetoric and reality happened in Karnataka: the Congress won all five Legislative Council seats it contested—plus an additional seat by persuading cross voting by the BJP. It was the kind of outcome old Congress managers once considered routine, but which the Rahul Congress has no idea, or interest, on how to achieve. The architect of the win is DK Shivakumar; probably the reason Uddhav Thackeray—whose party rapidly imploded after six MPs crossed over to the Shinde-BJP camp—invited him to Mumbai to confabulate. Whether DKS, with all his political management skill, can pull off a miracle in Maharashtra to save an INDIA ally is questionable. It was left to him to soothe MK Stalin, whom Rahul treated churlishly in public during the Tamil Nadu elections and dumped unceremoniously.
Shivakumar is yet to acquire national status, but definitely has national recall. He has emerged as a serious national trouble shooter for his party. No thanks to Rahul, who detests mass leaders who will not kowtow to him. Yet, political kinetics keeps pulling DKS’s name into the national conversation. But for today’s Congress, such interlocutors and enforcers are suspect. The party historically marginalises leaders of the DKS type. In the 1970s, Devaraj Urs built the most sophisticated social coalition the Congress had ever achieved in Karnataka by forging OBCs, Dalits, and minorities into an unprecedented electoral force. Discarded by Indira Gandhi, he died politically diminished. Sharad Pawar built Congress into a dominant force in Maharashtra, cultivating the cooperative sector and managing the competing interests of the Maratha peasantry, Mumbai’s working class, and Pune’s commercial communities. Expelled in 1999, he formed the NCP, and sank the Congress’s political future. Sachin Pilot resuscitated the Rajasthan Congress from its post-2013 coma, delivered in 2018, and was then subjected to deliberate humiliation, denied the chief ministership, and was pushed to the point of open rebellion in 2020 after he was denied the chief ministership like DKS initially was. The party has neither earned nor acknowledged such a restraint and loyalty. While Sachin has faded from the national radar, for now, DKS occupies the alternative position. In a party where giant leaders like Ahmed Patel, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Kamal Nath, and Pranab Mukherjee could forge inter-party consensuses, apart from Bhupesh Baghel and Mukul Wasnik, now, the Rahul coterie comprises Kaushal Vidyarthee, Alankar Sawai, KB Byju, Praveen Chakravarty et al.
Chakravarty who? Exactly.
Kharge, in spite of all the respect he commands, cannot influence a single voter in UP. Rahul’s pernicious puppeteer KC Venugopal wouldn’t know the name of a single party worker in Bihar. CWC members like geriatric AK Antony, Anand Sharma, Deepa Dasmunsi, Channi, etc. can’t get 10 voters between them in Madhya Pradesh. Himanta Sarma humiliated Gaurav Gogoi. To call Jairam Ramesh a mass leader is like calling a Tiffin box a buffet—all are has-beens or will-never-beens.
The Congress’s last bastion is the South. It has three Congress CMs, and is an alliance partner in Tamil Nadu. Hence, the national choice is limited. DKS speaks Hindi without the self-consciousness that afflicts many southern politicians, and English without the affectation of someone mimicking cosmopolitanism. He is a Vokkaliga from the dominant Karnataka community, but he has consistently reached beyond community arithmetic to keep his party afloat. In UP, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Haryana, the BJP has built a ruthless victory machine over decades of patient work. The Opposition’s only effective response will be to build a counter-machine with equal patience and seriousness. That requires someone who understands the construction of party infrastructure at the district and booth level, financial savvy seduction, soothing of local egos, and the management of factional disputes before they become the internal wars that cost the party winnable seats. The only Congress alternative to the BJP is DK Shivakumar; and it knows this, too. With such powerful adversaries like Modi and the RSS, it won’t be smooth sailing for him.
The distinction between what Rahul and Karnataka’s DK Shivakumar offers is not what is better or worse. DKS commands a rare combination which cannot be earned with genetic entitlement: charisma and calculation. He understands not just how elections are won, but also how they are fought. In politics, ideological, cadre-driven machines defeat movements. The man who can build the Congress such a machine is waiting. Will his own party, and Rahul Gandhi, allow him to do that?
