Karnataka polls: The real reason they are important for national politics

In projecting himself separately from BJP, Modi seems to be asking voters, who else is there but me

Many people think the outcome of the Karnataka election will make a difference to, and in, the 2019 general election. This is despite the fact that Karnataka has only 28 Lok Sabha seats. It is, therefore, by any reckoning, politically a relatively small state.

But if you remind people who are promoting this theory of this basic fact, they hark back to the Haryana assembly election of 1987. That too was held in the month of May and in that too the Congress, which was seen as all powerful after its 415 victory in the general election of 1984, was roundly defeated. 

That defeat, it is said, reversed the Congress’s fortunes to such an extent that it ‘lost’ the general election of 1989 -- lost in the sense that it went down from 415 seats to 207 and was still the single largest party. But Rajiv Gandhi declined to form the government saying the Opposition had won a moral victory.

The real importance of the 1987 election – Haryana has only 10 Lok Sabha seats, even smaller than Karnataka – lay in three things. These have relevance even now.

First, it showed that the 1984 Congress tally in the Lok Sabha was a freak result caused by the assassination of Indira Gandhi just six weeks earlier. The 2014 BJP tally may not have been the result of a major tragedy but it was a freak nevertheless. As I have been writing for some time now, 190-210 seats is what defines a majority now.

Second, the regional parties had grown stronger in the first half of the 1980s. Their strength has only continued to increase. The BJP appears strong only after forming a partnership with them.

And, third, that a united Opposition is no good if it doesn’t have a leader who is acceptable to all. Indeed, this is the key to its success. Even in 1977, in the election held in the wake of Emergency the Janata Party victory was soon sullied by the leadership contest between Morarji Desai, Jagjivan Ram and Charan Singh.  Morarji won only because of tacit RSS support.

In 1989, V. P. Singh filled that role but only up to a point. He, too, was challenged by Devi Lal for prime ministership. The end of that government came within eight months, when RSS/BJP support became shaky, and was withdrawn after eleven months.

The 1991 election brought back the Congress – this time as a minority government led by a man – P. V. Narasimha Rao -- who was the least unacceptable of the lot rather than the most acceptable. His leadership was soon being challenged by his rivals who had the tacit support of Sonia Gandhi.

The leadership issue in the Congress was settled in 1998 when Sonia Gandhi as the head of the Gandhi family was brought back into politics. But not everyone accepted her and Sharad Pawar left to form his own party.

Not just he: the Tamil branch of the Congress, which had broken away in 1996, took all of eight years to return to the fold. Once again it was about leadership. G K Moopanar was not ready to accept Sitaram Kesri as his leader.

The freak success of the Congress in 2004 convinced the Congress that the solution to its leadership problems, which date back a 100 years to the tussles between Gandhiji and Jinnah, lies in dynasty. So a fourth generation Gandhi, Rahul, is now its hereditary leader. But he has lost elections everywhere.

To put it simply, the Congress may have settled its internal leadership problem by making the post hereditary but having lost its pre-eminence a good 30, if not 34, years ago, it needs to convince its likely partners that Rahul can lead the UPA.

It is not at all clear that he will be acceptable to the UPA’s regional parties even if the Congress wins over a 100 seats out in Karnataka of the total of 225. The victory will be seen as Siddharamiah’s, just as the party’s good showing in Gujarat last year was not attributed to Rahul Gandhi.

Narendra Modi, meanwhile, is totally aware of how crucial a weakness this is. So guess what? He has begun to project himself separately from the BJP.

The idea is a simple: you may decide not to vote for the BJP but who else is there but me? And, in a way, this is a challenge to the RSS as well, large sections of which believe it was Hindutva and not Modi who won them the majority in 2014. Indeed, they are back to it now.

So, yes, the Karnataka election is important but only from the leadership angle – for both the NDA and the UPA.