Siddaramaiah's anti-urban bias may well become the chink in Cong's armour

And Siddaramaiah's relationship with his former leader, H D Deve Gowda, and his biting criticism of the Vokkaliga community amplify and inform both the data and his politics

Judging by an analysis of the data the 2023 Assembly election in Karnataka has thrown up, Siddaramaiah is the Congress’ most appropriate — and indeed, logical — choice for chief minister (CM).

The data reveals two (among many other) sit-up conclusions.

One, as Nilanjan Sircar of the Centre for Policy Research notes, is that the strike rate (the seats contested versus those won) of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in rural areas fell from 55 in 2018 to 25 in 2023. And correspondingly, support for Congress went up from 35 to 63. In other words, the BJP was almost as