The BJP lost as expected, but the Congress did not win clean in the Karnataka Assembly elections.

With the Congress marking a clear win and looking set to form the government in Karnataka, caution is in order. Too much should not be read into the win.

The fact is this election actually proves nothing.

It does not prove that corruption has been a decisive issue in Karnataka. It does not prove that Rahul Gandhi was able to use his charm to good effect. It does not prove that Narendra Modi cannot make a difference. It does not prove that caste is such a decisive factor. It does not even prove that the BJP would have won if BS Yeddyurappa hadn’t left the party. At best we can say that BJP plus Yeddurappa would not have lost miserably.

This was an election the Congress ought to have won at a canter. It did win clean, but not without some jitters. For the BJP, the real disaster is perceptional. It appears to have fallen below the Janata Dal (Secular) to third place. Not a great place to be for a national party.

This was an election that the BJP was destined to lose, given the damage done to the party by the exit of BS Yeddyurappa. But, it appears, the party actually made some last-minute changes to prevent a complete disaster. The fact that it has disproved Yeddyurappa’s theory that without him the BJP will amount to nothing is actually a plus. It will show doubters within the BJP that the party still counts. Yeddyurappa, if he is not to remain in the wilderness, will have to make peace with the BJP to be relevant again. Joining any other party would be political suicide for him.

A stronger conclusion that can be drawn is that Karnataka is split three ways between the Congress, the BJP and the JD(S). It is worth speculating on whether BJP-JD(S) is the most complementary formation in the state – though, given the personality clashes between their leaders, they don’t seem to work well together. But as a viable non-Congress alternative, it is always an option for the future. That is, assuming the BJP does not sort out its own internal issues in the meanwhile.

Another tentative conclusion one could look at is that corruption is not always the main issue. The BJP got booted out not for corruption per se, but the resultant lack of governance. This may be a pointer to the Congress-led UPA at the centre. It is not the corruption scandals that may ultimately count, but the seeming lack of coherence in government.

Given the hype around Yeddyurappa’s alleged corruption, and given the corruption scandals enveloping the Congress at the Centre, one can suspect that the two cancelled each other out. The BJP may have lost badly due to failures of governance.

Dynastic politics also appear to be a non-issue. Many Congress and JD(S) politicians fielded their relatives in the polls – and the voter had very little to say on this factor.

Another tentative pointer is that caste matters, but it does not matter all that much too. It is a mistake to equate Lingayat pride with one man (Yeddyurappa) just as it is wrong to presume that all Vokkaligas are with the Gowdas, including Deve Gowda and his son Kumaraswamy.

The elections show that Lingayats did not vote en bloc for Yeddyurappa, nor Vokkaligas for JD(S). Yeddyurappa’s Karnataka Janata Party is unlikely to win more than a handful of seats, which would not have been the case if Lingayats were miffed about his ouster. The BJP kept a part of the Lingayat vote.

This suggests that even caste-based votes may be tactical in nature. Writing before the elections, Palini Swamy suggested that castes are not monolithic in their voting patterns. He wrote in Churumuri, “We really don’t have a good 21st century theory of (how) caste loyalties inspire electoral politics. It is grating to see Yeddyurappa described as the ‘sole leader’ of Lingayats and Deve Gowda characterised as the Vokkaliga ‘strong man’. Please internalise this: caste support to political parties and leaders is tactical and local; it is not strategic and translocal.”

The elections prove him right. According to Swamy, “sub-caste and matha-influence is more important than…translocal caste loyalties…”.

More importantly - and this is a pointer to the fact that corruption is now an accepted phenomenon in electoral politics – money is certainly becoming important to winning elections. While Swamy speculates that winning candidates would not have spent less than Rs 5 crore per constituency, he also asserts that the politician is now an entrepreneur. “Karnataka has seen a new breed of politician, who has had substantial business interests and is willing to plough back huge amounts of money back into electoral politics. This new politician is in politics to manipulate public policy, further his business interests and secure maximum profits.”

While there is no doubt that the Congress has won, this election does not lend itself to any clear interpretation. In fact, one can make an opposite prediction: it will be no guide to what may happen in the parliamentary elections – which can go either way.

This means the field is open for the right parties, the right leaders with the right message allied to the right political entrepreneurs in 2014.

Karnataka is not a done deal for any party, including the victor – the Congress. The real story may be in vote shares, but for that we will have to wait another day. The Narendra Modi factor cannot be said to have been important in this election, but it cannot be written off either for the future.

The takeout for the Congress is this: you cannot win locally without a clear leader.

The takeout for the BJP is this: You cannot win any state without a strategy and with the same bunch of clueless leaders sitting in Delhi, who don't have a base anywhere. It is still Advantage Modi.