The year 2020 is a mirage of a palindrome, yet it appears so rounded and perfect. In a notional sense, if not numerological, the year that we are leaving behind, 2019, looked like a precipice. It appeared as if many were waiting to jump off its cliff, and they did. The metaphor works particularly well for politicians and political parties in Karnataka. Without remorse or regret, and a vision that did not reach their windows, they surveyed the depths from the edge of nine, and there was only zero after that.
Take the case of the Congress. Led by former chief minister Siddaramaiah, with grand design and high intrigue, it surrendered itself to BJP and BS Yeddyurappa, and thereby jumped off our notional nine. There is no hope that the party, at least in the near future, will garner a 38-40 per cent vote share to form a government on its own. There is no clarity on which community supports the party. The much bandied AHINDA (minorities, backwards and Dalits) vote base is in tatters. The dominant communities are not looking elsewhere, and there is no leader of stature to consolidate any community, quickly. They need allies but are only surrounded by competition.
Like is the case nationally, in the state too, the Congress appears weak on ideas, ideology and network. They have for decades been a party of bickering egoists waiting for power to saunter to their threshold so that they could welcome it into their homes. That cyclical fortune of the past appears to have now dissolved. Their comatose performance during the CAA-NRC protests should tell us how rudderless they are. They stand up or speak out for none because they are in mortal fear of a vindictive BJP. We are told they now await a messiah called DK Shivakumar. After this, we need to say nothing more about their talent pool.
When it comes to the Janata Dal (Secular), they have consulted their own decennial plans to seek oblivion. The last time they had banished themselves was in 2008, when they failed to transfer power to the BJP after a 20 months each power arrangement. This time in 2019, one thought their prudence will never seek the precipice, but they have been loyal to none but their destiny. They never expected that the family will be so badly rebuffed when it became the party. The electoral loss in Tumkur, of patriarch H D Deve Gowda, who truly deserved to be in parliament, and the greenhorn son of H D Kumaraswamy in Mandya, followed by a bypoll loss, again in Mandya, is demonstrative of the fall from the nine we have conjured. They seem to be deeply worried about the saffronisation of the Vokkaliga vote. A threat that can be warded off with some conviction, but then ‘conviction’ is a difficult spelling.
Finally, the BJP. Its fall in 2019 is altogether of a different magnitude. They have been jumping off many moral cliffs, but they have found their new nine this time. However, they are so delusional at the moment that they have convinced themselves that they are not falling, but are being guided by gentle clouds towards a prosperous destination.
If JDS reneged on a promise in 2008, BJP had then purchased power to rule for five years. Ten years later, they have reapplied their rusty formula minus the Bellary Reddys. Yeddyurappa is no longer young, his insecurity has pushed his son, Vijayendra to pose as a successor.
The chief minister has so far escaped the Modi-Shah clutches, but there are enough colleagues snapping at his heels or operating with dual loyalty. They are all waiting for a moment, which may arrive in 2020, when they can mount a challenge to Yeddyurappa. But he is no less a tactician, therefore he is playing the communal card he is not familiar with. If he integrates his caste following with the communal base of the BJP, he knows he is finished. But he is biding his time. His withdrawal of compensation to victims of police firing in Mangalore is a withdrawal of his humanity. He is fully aware. But, he thinks he is playing a survival game. That's the fall.
These falls from the imaginary nine should tell us that 2020 can be full of surprises. A year when hope can build new constituencies beyond the comatose predictability of caste and all the skullduggery power has initiated so far. It may be time for a generational change, which means not just new faces, but new attitude and new ideas. Inshallah.
Sugata Srinivasaraju
Senior journalist and author