By Monday evening, the last line will be written to another chapter of Karnataka politics. In fact, by noon it will be clear if the exit polls read the ground right. Or went off the mark, like they did in Maharashtra and Haryana, where the ruling dispensation was prophesied to reap a bumper harvest. As it famously turned out, there was no clear winner in either and India got to see a mahanataka. But curiously enough, neither the Congress nor the JD(S) has bothered to challenge the Karnataka bypoll predictions, the way the Pawars and Hoodas did in their fiefs. In fact, not even in private conversations.
Congress, which has most to lose in terms of stronghold constituencies, for some reason had a rather low-key campaign. It’s almost as if they would rather sit in the opposition and have B S Yediyurappa wear a crown of thorns than choose this moment to teach the rebels a lesson. It was only when they sensed something in the air that Congress leaders, including Siddaramaiah, started talking about yet another shot at power, with who else but the JD(S). This was after the idea gained ground of a Vokkaliga backlash — after all, a government headed by one of their own had been pulled down and another was sent to Tihar jail. Even outside the community, there was a latent public resentment over this unnecessary mini-Assembly poll.
The Gowdas, however, kept giving mixed signals. If one day Gowda Senior said he was not interested in pulling down the BSY government, the next day he was willing to be the bulwark of a new opposition front. The Maharashtra experiment led by Pawar Senior had obviously given him ideas. His son and deposed CM H D Kumaraswamy was surprisingly lukewarm. His disinterest was writ large, unchanged from when he was in government and now, when he’s out of it.
HDK’s former ally, the Congress, seems ready with a lame, defeatist script in its head too. The GOP never even claimed it would win back all 15 seats and kept its stated ambition to a modest 5-6. With that kind of a hemorrhage expected, did it treat the bypolls as a make-or-break scenario? Not quite. Only Siddaramaiah and Dinesh Gundu Rao as his Sancho Panza tried to woo the voters. Former deputy CM G Parameshwara was nursing ill-health. The maverick D K Shivakumar, who now sports a Devdas look, temple-hopped through the campaign. Not in Rahul Gandhi style, but on a personal penance of sorts.
The two top AICC functionaries attached to Karnataka, Mallikarjun Kharge and K C Venugopal, were up to their gills with Maharashtra and hardly spared a breath for this round of electioneering. As if in acknowledgment that there was more hope in Maharashtra. So patchy and lackluster was their voter outreach that even the BJP camp was surprised. Had they known earlier, the BJP claimed they could have done without spending what they did! The Congress and JD(S) of course have been complaining about the BJP stealing the show with money power. Well, BSY could not have been faulted for not using his lung power too, while touring all the 15 constituencies twice over. It was clearly his election, to be won or lost.
Even the prime rebels, like Ramesh Jarkiholi and Mahesh Kumathalli, were reduced to side actors.But are the people really interested? Bengaluru could not care less. The city-bred obviously think that our democracy runs on auto-pilot. Their social duties are entirely contained within social media. Polling booths thus saw more of the old and infirm lining up, rather than the millennials. The hinterland was better. Hoskote, just off Bengaluru, outperformed itself, with over 90 per cent of voters casting their ballots. The rest went about their business. Elections, for them, could well have been happening on Mars. There’s no feelgood factor in the air to make them believe in politics as a constructive thing. Whoever wins, democracy is the loser — it’s a slow, but certain erosion. The public seems more ready to cheer the law-benders, not the lawmakers.
Santwana Bhattacharya
Resident Editor, Karnataka
santwana@newindianexpress.com