Santwana Bhattacharya By

In a little less than a month and a half, we get to know Siddaramaiah’s fate. A lot is riding on this contest—and that’s the admitted position of the man in the centre of the arena. Leave aside your poll fatigue for now—the sense that, for every election these days, breathless telemarketers of democracy drum up the adrenaline and make us believe it’s a make-orbreak moment in the history of the nation. Karnataka arrests our attention for one extra factor: this election is also about Siddaramaiah. The biggest surprise in Karnataka’s pre-election heat is perhaps how it forged this political actor, how it showcased the evolution, almost from inside out, of this man from the shepherd caste, testing his skills at tending to the flock in full national view.

The way he has stretched himself and his politics makes it worth the watch. It began with his assimilation into the Congress party, shedding the ‘outsider’ tag. At one level, he has won the confidence of the famed ‘high command’— his chemistry with Rahul Gandhi, the trust factor between them, are the talk of the town. But he has gone beyond that and buried the hatchet with the local originals of the Congress big tent. For a party that’s traditionally and structurally a congregation of local leaders and their interests, the second is no mean achievement. Not that internal dissent has been totally snuffed out, but still.

Then came the crucial chess move, as he invoked Kannada pride. The Centre needlessly played into his hands by insisting on Hindi signposts at metro stations (confession: it’s a bit of a drag for even a Bengali occasionally visiting Bangalore, so one can understand the irritation of the Kannadiga!). In a few deft moves, Sidda went from there to a pedestal where he stands with a new flag for the state. Chauvinism is an ideologically dicey, but politically rich field. A state BJP leader apparently told a veteran (Bihar-origin) journalist visiting from Delhi that he’s worried about the prime minister repeating the ‘Siddarupaiah’ pun—and asking whether it can be conveyed to the PM or Amit Shah in some manner that it may boomerang.

“You’ll understand, it happened in the Bihar elections as well. It’s not Yeddyurappa saying it, but Modiji. Our people are not liking it...” So, from himself being theoutsider’, Siddaramaiah has managed to push the tag onto others, through his shifty politics. Once pride was secured, he went on to weaken the BJP’s strong ties with the Lingayat community. The CM may go blue in the face denying his “responsiveness” to the demand for minority status had anything to do with the elections, but the Congress surely hopes it has left the community a tad confused about its voting choices and may chip away at least one or two per cent from the BJP. (For those whom regional and national identities suffice, the need to retain or recalibrate a sub-regional identity may be difficult to grasp, but it can be the very underpinning of religious-cultural identities that feel under threat.) Will he be known for being sensitive? Or for division?

The sense one gets is that he has multiplied his own assets (and facets)—climbing out from the straitjacket of being just a leader of the Kurubas (the third largest votebank by the way), a socialist inducted into the Congress, a Kannadiga leader, to perhaps one of the strongest voices from the south of Vindhyas. His latest salvo on the disparity in allocation between the North and the developed South, despite the latter being the bigger revenue generator and contributor to the central pool, has found resonance. It falls upon Modi, when he hits the campaign trial in Karnataka, to offer a strong enough counter-pitch. It’s a scenario defined neither by anti-incumbency nor a pro-wave—so Sidda is going for first-mover advantage.

The deep communal divide, especially in coastal Karnataka, clearly needs more intelligently crafted responses than just the play between Rahul’s soft Hinduvta and Sidda’s secularism. This is no one-sided match. Neither is Karnataka bereft of strong leaders. Count Yeddyurappa and former PM H D Deve Gowda as active players. But what helps the incumbent CM and hinders Yeddy is perhaps the fact that the BJP and Congress have swapped their internal political workings. The BJP now follows the high command culture, where Yeddy has a subservient role even to state in-charge Prakash Javadekar (who has clipped his closest aide’s wings). There’s still some inner wrangling within the BJP, a sense that Yeddy protects only the interests of his erstwhile party members. Still, unlike last time, the BJP has the advantage of having both Yeddy and B Sriramulu (Lok Sabha MP, Bellary) back in the fold—a seven per cent vote kitty. As for Deve Gowda, his Vokkaliga supporters may help him hold onto his Old Mysuru domain.

That apart, his ambivalence towards the BJP and his remark about “coughing” the Congress away in proximity with the saffron party does not seem to have gone well with his Janata Dal ‘Secular’ votes. It has, for one, helped the Congress consolidate Muslim votes. Siddaramaiah’s perceived pampering of his own Kuruba caste too has not gone down well with other ‘AHINDA’ backwards. But banking on the Congress to mess up in candidate selection and wilting before a Modi roadshow may not suffice in a fluid contest where Sidda is playing from the position of natural strength that an incumbent has before his stars dim. As of now, unless he fouls up, he controls the game—which is not to say he can’t lose the plot. Will Karnataka determine how India will go in 2019? That’s for another day.