Has The Karnataka Verdict Pushed BJP on the Back Foot?

The stupendous victory of the Congress in the Karnataka assembly elections defying every election gimmick by the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) under the sun startled political enthusiasts and psephologists as most of the opinion polls had predicted a hung assembly. The Grand Old Party won 135 out of the 224 assembly seats with a phenomenal 7 per cent increase in electoral support base.

The BJP suffered an ignominious defeat (with its vote share unchanged) primarily due to the complexities of triangular party competition, strong anti-incumbency sentiments, micro-political unity of Congress leadership and the catastrophic collapse of the regional party — the Janata Dal (Secular).

The Congress attributed the mandate primarily as a referendum for the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’, which galvanised the party system and marked the rise of Rahul Gandhi as a national leader like a phoenix from the ashes. Mainstream media and left-liberals were quick in bracketing the victories of the Congress in Himachal Pradesh (HP) and Karnataka as a political revival and stagnation or decline of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s charisma in winning elections, throwing open the general election of 2024. Thus, it becomes imperative to read between the lines of the provincial verdicts to debunk the many electoral myths and their potential fallout on national politics.

Political and election myths

First, the twin victories deflate the Congress and its ecosystem’s (media and academia) claims of democratic downslide and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) destroying constitutional and democratic institutions in India. If the saffron party manipulated the Election Commission of India (ECI) and Electronic voting Machines (EVMs) or used money power to win elections, the Congress party could not have won them and formed state governments. The results vindicate the notion that elections in India are free and fair, and digressions from democratic processes are episodic exceptions rather than the rule.

Second, it clearly shows the flaws in the political discourse of the ‘secularism-communalism’ binary and the erroneous ascription of ‘Hindutva’ as the main determinant that defines the success of right-wing ideology in electoral politics. It reveals the intrinsic limitations as well as the exaggerated importance of religious organisations (mutts, madrasas, and churches) in mobilising votes/shaping victories for political parties. Communal polarisation and mobilisation can only provide an icing on the cake for a party in power; it is essential to do good governance and outreach on last-mile public policies to win successive elections.  

Third, the decisive defeat of the BJP shows that political legitimacy of the BJP and its umbrella caste community calculus (newly included OBC, SC, and ST sub-groups) is dynamic, and needs repeated electoral renewals. The patron-client relationship and identification of voters with parties remain intact until the party pursues its common goals and adheres to democracy and probity in public life. Any serious breach leads to rational voters deserting the party or abstaining from voting, acts that benefitted the Congress.

Finally, it demolishes the myth that ‘Modi Magic’ fails completely in state elections when confronted with strong regional parties and son-of-the-soil leadership. The electoral turf, one of ‘extreme corruption’ in Karnataka, was akin to the national landscape in 2014, which had resulted in the decimation of the Congress as it managed to win around 10 per cent seats (44 out of 543 parliamentary seats). By this logic, the BJP should have won around 24 seats (won 62 seats instead), but due to Modi’s charisma and intense campaign, it could minimise the magnitude of defeat in terms of the number of assembly seats lost, and managed to keep its vote share intact. Numerically, more voters supported the saffron party, flattening the popular propaganda of ‘BJP-Mukt South India’.     

Impact on national politics

The politicking and vision of the Congress post the 2014 Lok Sabha elections turned inconsistent and dysfunctional, and plans to revive its falling stocks proved politically inefficacious and irreversible. It remained in suspended animation for quite a long time before it launched the nationwide campaign of ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ in 2022 with the aim of making a political comeback. The walkathon had a limited impact in creating a Congress resurgence (lost badly in Gujarat and Punjab elections) as it focussed more on reinventing Rahul Gandhi as a national leader rather than rejuvenating the party system.

The electoral triumph of the Grand Old Party in HP and Karnataka was a welcome breather as it stopped its further decline and provided political traction and motivation to the party cadres. The party revivification could include a conscientious tweaking of its ideology to assimilate ‘Hindu pride’, shedding its anti-Hindutva image and creating/implementing a populist model of governance in a Congress-ruled state. It can plebeianize top decision making, reinvest in collective leadership, reestablish the mechanism of intra-party conflict resolution, decentralise re-engagement with the electorate, invite turncoats and alienated foot soldiers and switch to contemporary political language and new-age electoral grammar.

The defeat of the BJP in Karnataka elections is a revelation as it cautions the party about over centralisation in top decision-making, limitations of relying on a catch-all ‘Hindi heartland’ election blueprint, its failure to devise a southern strategy and incorporate regional aspirations, omission in investing in grassroots leadership in the states, and the overdose of communal issues to mask its governance failures.

The most worrisome outcome is the loss of the support base of the poor, as the party’s political successes depend on the partisanship and loyalty of the proletarian class who perceive themselves as the paternalistic ‘beneficiaries of Modi’s patronisation and distributive welfarism’. It has to safeguard itself from the politics of freebies as it two lost elections each to the Congress and AAP, and needs to devise a political narrative to counter election-winning strategies based on free lunches. The saffron party needs to reach out to its former ally, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in Andhra Pradesh and the JD(S) in Karnataka to neutralise Congress’ gains and win a sizable number of Lok Sabha seats south of the Vindhyas.      

The biggest fallout of the vanquishment of the BJP in the only southern state it had ruled (on and off) for close to a decade has been the reinvigoration of the Opposition parties to form an alliance to defeat it in the 2024 elections. The expectation of a formidable and decisive anti-BJP alliance is much higher as compared with the 2019 elections but its positive outcome will depend on two factors. One, the Left-liberal formation will need to declare a legitimate leader soon to take on ‘mighty’ Modi so that it will allow the person to build political capital and pan-India acceptability. Two, the alliance has to go on overdrive to dispel the ‘There is No Alternative to Modi’, (the ‘TINA’ factor) which seems to have become ingrained in the conscious psyche of electorate as well as the perceptual belief of his political and electoral invincibility.

The index of Opposition unity needs to be high to neutralise the electoral weave of Modi’s charisma that creates a ‘Pied piper’ effect on the electorate and entices them to step into polling booths in hordes and press the EVM button with the symbol of the lotus on it. 

(Praveen Rai is a Political Analyst at the CSDS, Delhi.)