An inverse bellwether!

As Karnataka goes into polls in a few days the country is watching. The national elections are due in barely 12 months, and maybe earlier if you ask cynics. Calling this the semi-final might be a bit of a stretch, but the importance of the elections in Karnataka cannot be underestimated. For the congress it is a great chance to to start the home stretch on a winning note. For the BJP emerging from the tangle they have got themselves into with some modicum of respect is important for them to be considered seriously as a national party.

Another round of state elections is due before that. Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi and Chattisgarh will go to the polls later this year. The BJP would fancy their chances of winning at least three of those four. Everybody wants to back the winning horse and having a respectable position in Karnataka, and a winning a few more in the next round would  position them well in the coalition sweepstakes before 2014. Conversely a bad performance in Karnataka could adversely effect chances in the next round, and with few allies around anyway, push it towards a desparate 'all-in' strategy.

Karnataka results would also be watched because for some wierd coincidence, Karnataka is somewhat like an inverse bellwether of the national political scene. Karnataka for some reasons always seems to go in the opposite direction as the rest of the country is going. A point that is brought out by the following graphic illustrating the fluctuating fortunes of the main political formations in the state over the last 35 years.

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Lets start at 1978, barely a year after the Janta Party swept the Lok Sabha to give the country its first non-Congress government, the congress swept Karnataka winning more than 60% of the seats. In Indira Gandhi's darkest political hour, she fought the by-election from Chikmagalur in 1978 to get back to parliament.
Again on either side (1983 and 1985) of of Rajiv Gandhis historic 80% majority in 1984  Karnataka stayed shy of the Congress, giving the Janta party led by Ramakrishna Hegde a clear majority in 1985. Once again in 1989 when Bofors and the emergence of VP Singh forced the Congress out of power in the center, it roared back to power in karnataka with an unprecedented 4/5 majority. In 1994 while Narasimha Rao ruled in the centre Karnataka went back to the Janta Dal. 
In 1999 BJP came to power in the Center with the NDA government but Karnataka was safe with the Congress. SM Krishna completed the rare full term in office. This strange phenomenon continued in 2008 when at the heels of UPA winning a secont term in Office, the BJP stormed to power for the first time in a southern state. 

The graphic also tells a strong story about the steady growth of the BJP over the last 30 years in Karnataka. Whether the Saffron 'worm' has lost its steam just before it was about to catch up with the blue Congress one is something we will find out shortly.  Also what does come out clearly is that amidst all its highs and lows the Congress has managed to keep its vote share relatively stable in Karnataka. The growth of the BJP, though it has been nibbling at the Congress core as well has largely been at the expense of the fractious Janta family of parties..

A deeper look at the regional level is perhaps warranted to get a better understanding of the evolution of  Karnataka politics in this period. 

Karnataka-2008, How the BJP got its first southern state government

The 2008 assembly elections in Karnataka were significant for the state in a number of ways.  The following is an attempt to analyze  the 2008 assembly elections and to extrapolate implications on the 2013 if possible. As always perhaps a look at the events in lead-up to the polls is a good place to start

Leadup to 2008:

 In its short democratic history of about 60 year, Karnataka has seen as many as 21 Chief Ministers. It has been common for Chief Ministers to be unable to complete their full 5 year term, many of them falling to internal bickering in the course of their term. Devaraj Urs(in 1972) and S.M Krishna (in 1999) have been  the  only two exceptions to this. 

When elections were held in 2004 after S.M. Krishna completed his full term, the verdict was highly fractured, plunging the state into 5 years of political uncertainty.  The BJP emerged as the single largest party with 79 seats followed by Congress with 65 and JD(S) with 58.

The grand ‘betrayal’: The Congress and JD(S) formed a coalition government with Dharam Singh as the Chief Minister. The Dharam Singh government collapsed after a split engineered by Kumaraswami, who went on to become the CM of a power sharing coalition government with the BJP . The agreement was to split the remaining term 20 months each. However when Yeddyurappa’s turn came Kumaraswami refused to step aside, leading to the BJP withdrawing support reducing the government to a minority. Kumaraswami relented later, and Yeddyurappa was sworn in as chief minister  only for Kumaraswamy to pull out the rug 7 days later over some disagreements in sharing ministries leading the state into a 6 month period of presidents rule. This one month drama that played out in Bangalore in October- November 2007 created a very sorry image of the states politics. From this episode, JD(S) and  specifically DeveGowda/Kumaraswami emerged from this farce as distinct villains in public perception.

A contrast in leaderships: This was exploited to the hilt by the BJP which portrayed it as a betrayal of not just the party, but of the entire Lingayat community, and by extension northern Karnataka, by a party lead by a Vokkaliga from the south. Yeddyurappa a strong leader of the Lingayat community, was clearly and unambiguously promoted as the chief ministerial candidate by the BJP to further exploit this sense of betrayal. On the other hand the congress did not have a clear CM candidate. The last minute recall of S.M.Krishna to the state from the governorship of Maharashtra was too little too late.

Delimitation: Another important event that happened between 2004 and 2008 elections was that electoral constituency boundaries were drastically redrawn as a part of the delimitation process, to better represent the movement in populations. A full analysis of this is perhaps not appropriate for this post but there were two important outcomes from the process. Firstly, the number of urban constituencies drastically increased. For example the number of constituencies in the the two districts of the greater Bangalore region increased from 25 to 36. The second consequence was that the number of seats reserved for SC and ST candidates also increased from 35 to 51.  

Result - 2008

The Results of Karnataka-2008 marked an important transition for the BJP. In the short history of its existence the BJP has always been seen as a party of the Hindi heartland. Its leaders took great pride in their chaste Hindi, and even at the height of its popularity in 1999, when it formed the government at the center, it did not really make an impact in the vernacular periphery of the country. It was literally absent from the south, north-east and parts of the east.  By emerging as the single largest party and almost garnering a majority in Karnataka the BJP took a step towards becoming truly a national party.

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In all the BJP garnered 109 of the 224 seats, falling just 4 short of a simple majority. The congress was a distant second with 80 seats.  The BJP took this 29 seat lead over the Congress inspite  of garnering a lower vote share (~1%) than the Congress (vote shares are represented by the light grey bars in above graphic).  The BJP’s all in strategy with promoting a Lingayat as leader evidently reaped rich rewards in the Lingayat heartland of Bombay Karnataka and Central Karnataka. In both these regions the BJP secured more than twice the number of seats as both its opponents combined.

In spite of its internal bickerings the  Congress maintained a good performance in its traditional stronghold of Hyderabad Karnataka  and Mysore region, where they benifitted from the slide in the fortunes of the JD(S).

The figures from coastal Karnataka on the other hand seem to belie the image of saffron heartland and BJP bastion. Even though the BJP won the majority of seats here, once again it actually secured less votes than the congress in the region.

The same story repeated itself in the Bangalore region where BJP ended up winning 5 seats more than the BJP in spite of having a lower vote share. Both of these factoids may be pointers to poor prioritization and election management by the Congress. Overall the performance of the Congress seems to reflect the state of its leadership in the state, scattered and without focus.

Coming back to 2013, Once again the BJP seems to be going for the caste based permutation with a Lingayat at the helm. Once again the congress has not called out a clear leader.  Siddharamaiah, Mallikarjuna Kharge, Veerappa Moily, Dharam Singh, JH Patel, Oscar Fernandez and even the likes of SM Krishna, Margaret Alva and C.K Jaffer Sherief could all be in the fray. And the JD(S) again looks like being  restricted to Mysore region as a player.

However a lot has changed in 5 years. In terms of appeal as a mass leader Shettar is no Yeddyurappa. And Yeddyurappa himself is now out of the BJP forming a separate political party, the KJP. The Reddy brothers who were purportedly bankrolling the BJP are now in prison, and not just that they now have a political outfit of their own. At the least the BSR Congress is likely to erode the 8/8 that the BJP got from Bellary last time around.

Most importantly, last time around the BJP was at the receiving end of sympathy, the one that had been betrayed. This time in the eyes of many people,  it is the betrayer, of the trust that the people of the state reposed in it, having squandered a golden opportunity amidst its bickering.