Karnataka is one of the few states keeping Congress alive and breathing as a national political party. Under Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, the 2025–26 budget promised growth in response to criticisms of bankruptcy resulting from the ‘guarantees’ that won the Congress its election (a 43% vote share and 135 seats).
With DKS driving the party and Siddaramaiah handling the government budget, all eyes were on how the state would meet the 7% growth target they had set. Luckily, adequate rainfall and promising agricultural outputs have helped greatly. Trade in services and growth in the industrial sector have kept the economic momentum of the state at sustainable levels.
On top of all this, controlled inflation aided by stable food prices and bolstered fiscal performance led to a 7.7% growth in revenue collections. A report titled ‘Mid-Year Review of State Finances’ anticipates that the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) will reach Rs 30,91,111 crore this year alone is a classic example of good economics.
The Congress government’s success on this front has prompted its critiques to look elsewhere. They have attempted to showcase the government’s failures and weaknesses despite loud cries of dissension and leadership change within their party.
They have looked to the MUDA, to embezzlement in Valmiki and Bovi corporations, to dharmic riots in Mandya and Nagamangala, to fuelling farmers’ agitations seeking a hike in sugarcane and maize prices, to the formation of an SIT for Dharmasthala, to the failure of the government’s guarantee to deliver timely monetary assistance to beneficiaries etc.
Most of this punditry was of course the result of poor governance by the Congress, which clears the fact that good politics may ensure good economics but good economics may not ensure good politics. With a 13% increase in receipts and a drop in revenue deficit to 0.6%, and with 26,474 crore debt repaid by the state, the government is in a formidable position to defend criticisms of it as a guarantee government.
A strong tax administration and renewed economic activity in the state have outwitted the governance failures and scams securing to the state the second rank in the country’s gross GST collections in the first half of 2025-26 itself, thus helping the state’s fiscal deficit to be projected at 2.95 percent of the GSDP. Controlling spending not beyond a third of the budget estimates and giving a notable increase in capital project expenditure has added to the state’s wellbeing.
But if all this spells the economics of a good year, the politics of it are severely lacking in wisdom and vision. The Congress is remarkably failing, time and again, to communicate its own strengths to the public thanks to this bickering within the party, involving nearly everyone up to the chief minister himself. Its ideology, though popular, has failed to impress the political pundits.
Despite its economic glories, it is these instances of poor governance that continue to cast a gloom on the people at every step of their life – from early morning milk deliveries to late evening alcohol consumption, from registering a house to fuelling a vehicle - and the people are vexed.
What should have been smart stewardship in the DK–Siddu government – with breakfast meetings and handshakes progressing the state while their power sharing was relegated to their drawing rooms – has instead seen DK’s temple runs and Siddu’s over-reliance on AHINDA to push SC/ST leaders as alternatives to his leadership.
Observers of politics have come to feel that these leaders from other communities are being played. Sessions in the Vikasa Soudha being dominated by accusations from both the ruling and opposition parties have done little to develop either Kittur or the Kalyana Karnataka region. It has exposed the hollowness of the promises politicians make.
The one thing that helped the unstructured politics in Karnataka this year has been the eyewash that was the caste census. It effectively burnt the hopes of many smaller communities looking for a political foothold. The limelight has stayed disproportionately on DK and Siddu with their MLA and cabinet colleagues left fighting for scraps.
‘Real’ development on the ground has remained invisible even as theoretically economics dominated the media at the state and national levels. The ‘guarantee model’, although replicated by other parties in other states, failed to showcase Karnataka in the right spirit. And that is where a need to restructure state politics arises. Congress has miles to go and still many promises to keep.
