The elections in Karnataka have been one of the five crucial state polls this year. They were seen as an indicator of voter sentiment ahead of national elections next year. The Congress party won 135 seats of the 224 Karnataka Assembly seats, with 42.9 percent votes. The poll results will surely energise the immensely fragmented Opposition that is aiming at forming a united front to challenge the strong unified leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under PM Narendra Modi, wherein the incumbent PM will seek to extend his prime ministership for a third consecutive term.
The Congress was routed by the BJP in the last two general elections and is striving to regain its political prominence nationwide. The party lacks a coherent national agenda and leadership, what it banks upon is to thrive on the alleged criticism of the BJP. But this will not help the party, in the long run, to shy away from its own internal decay, inertia, and ineptitude. However, to combat the Congress at any level, the BJP needs to strategise freshly without being complacent and stop overloading the PM to sweep the magic of his popular image during electoral campaigns and also bring more fresh minds to its think tank.
The results of the recent Karnataka Assembly polls have garnered competing theories of the contesting parties and sketched their testable implications, but most importantly, what is needed is to find the empirical data that may help adjudicate between these theories and the findings. This will result in a nuanced analysis and introspection which could be vital in bridging the gaps to a high performance in 2024.
A Reappraisal
A bright side of this high-voltage electoral exercise is that Assembly vote trends could be much different from Lok Sabha polls. It’s not an opinion but facts will testify the same. The BJP got a 36 percent vote share in the 2018 Assembly polls, almost the same as the 2023 Assembly polls in Karnataka. The vote share went up to 51.7 percent for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. So 2019 can be repeated by the BJP in 2024. We have seen similar data from Delhi, Rajasthan and other states where the BJP’s Lok Sabha vote share is far higher than in the Assembly elections. In 2018, the Congress won Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan Assembly polls but couldn’t convert the voter base in the general elections held in 2019, just after almost four months to its favour. Moreover, the Congress has gained at the cost of the JD(S) in Karnataka, consequently pushing the latter’s vote share without being able to affect BJP’s votes in the state.
Most of the corruption allegations from the Bommai government were from the turncoat Congress MLAs. Bommai himself being charged with such accusations, could not control these MLAs. In the 2023 Karnataka Assembly elections, 18 of the candidates fielded by the BJP were turncoats, while the Congress fielded 23 such candidates. The Congress strike rate with their turncoats with 69.6 percent of them winning in seats is much higher than that of the BJP’s turncoats, with a low strike rate of 5.6 percent. This arithmetic would show the picture at large.
The situation needs a reappraisal. The BJP’s central leadership should have been more vigilant in such situations. Unlike the BJP governments in states like UP under the chief ministership of Yogi Adityanath, Assam under Himanta Biswa Sarma and MP under Shivraj Singh Chouhan, many of the BJP-ruled states are not under astute regional leadership. They lack the knack for public dealing and political commitment. Hence, they have to depend mostly on ‘Modi Magic’ and flashing the report cards of the benefits from the centrally sponsored schemes. Prime Minister Modi’s handwork and dedication is unflinching. He campaigned aggressively in Karnataka, homing 65 million people and travelled through the length and breadth of the state by holding huge roadshows and election rallies.
The Lingayat Factor
Sidelining BS Yediyurappa and dropping Jagadish Shettar led to the erosion in the popularity of the BJP among the Lingayats who sizeably constitute 17-19 percent of the total population of Karnataka. The BJP should have smartly understood the historical mistake committed by Rajiv Gandhi, who showed utmost cruelty in handling the then Congress CM Veerandra Patil who had a strong base among Lingayats in the state, also affected the popularity of the Gandhis in the state. Patil was removed as the CM when he was severely ill. Karnataka, an erstwhile stronghold of the Congress lost its monolithic control over the state because of the resentment of the Lingayats, for which the BJP grew stronger over the years, shrinking Congress to only 1 Lok Sabha seat in 2019.
The general perception of the Congress prevailed to be beneficial only to the Vokkaligas and the Muslims. Truly enough, the Lingayats were never political beneficiaries of the Congress. They in turn, gave the BJP an electoral boost, and in the 1998 general elections, it got 13 Lok Sabha seats and made electoral inroads in the Congress bastions like Gulbarga (Kalaburagi), Kanakpura, Mysuru-Kodagu, Udupi, Chikkamagaluru, Shivamogga and Belagavi. Thereafter, the growth of the BJP was almost historically unhindered. The turncoat MLAs of the Congress were highly into corruption. Jagadish Shettar was not the only one who should have been dropped. BSY being replaced by Bommai further fuelled the anti-incumbency sentiments in the long run.
However, if the political rationale is applied, the decision of the BJP leadership cannot outrightly be contested viewing the fact that BSY built a caste-based coalition with a limited appeal and inherent limitations in comparison to BJP’s broad spectrum Hindu outreach. Moreover, the ageing BSY’s goal was known to most of the BJP partymen to hand over the baton of CMship to his son Vijayendra, the Karnataka BJP Vice President. As a political leader, he was less popular whose influence never went beyond his home Constituency.
Shrinking Rural Votes
BJP’s rural vote share is shrinking. The BJP has fared better in urban constituencies. Its vote share in urban constituencies stands at 46 percent as compared to its rural vote share of 37 percent. Out of 224, 143 Assembly segments categorised as rural and semi-rural regions, the BJP has won 30 in contrast to 92 by the Congress, the latter bagging 42 percent of the rural vote share. In 2018, it was around 35 percent for the Congress. This is because the BJP focuses more on infrastructure building and development and less on subsidies and freebies workable among the lower-income groups, (relatively). At policymaking, it becomes electorally difficult as a balancing act. Karnataka has been one of India’s fastest-growing states, with high FDI, and a sizeable chunk of aspirational youth, and low unemployment, especially in Bengaluru and bigger towns. Karnataka had a very low fiscal deficit and could have easily afforded a decent set of welfare schemes with subsidies.
Bengaluru’s turnout in the 28 constituencies remained dismal at an estimated 54.14 percent, which was predictable. It was 62 percent in 2013 and 57 percent in 2018. In contrast to this, most of the rural Constituencies had more than 83 percent turnout. Focusing more on the rural areas could get the BJP more of the vote share.
Rural Farmers And Their Concerns
Karnataka’s farmers have been facing several issues ranging from improper technology to agricultural loan debts. Karnataka is a vast state with varied topography. While there are agriculturally prosperous regions, some regions are severely affected by frequent droughts. This time, the agricultural loan waiver was not an electoral promise by any of the parties due to sufficient rainfall. The BJP should have been more careful with the rural areas where the farming sections were resentful about the three recent agrarian reforms i.e. Karnataka Land Revenue (Amendment) Act, 2020, Karnataka APMC (Amendment) Act, 2020 and Karnataka Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Act, 2020, and protested during the 2023 Budget session.
However, there is no doubt that the legislative intent of these reforms is in tune with further balancing of the agricultural market and strengthening of marginal farmers. The changes in APMC Act 2003 is policy-wise better as it finished the monopoly of the APMC to allow the farmers to sell outside. But the cost of farming (seeds, fertilizers and pesticides) is high so the government must provide a strong MSP to the farmers to avoid price volatility. While the APMC fixes prices for 23 crops, it provides MSP only for two crops i.e. paddy and wheat. Meanwhile, the Congress party has promised 200 units of electricity to all households in the state; a monthly allowance of Rs 2,000 for homemakers which will benefit 1.5 crore women; unemployment allowance of Rs 3,000 for graduates and Rs 1,500 for diploma holders for two years; and 10 kg rice for Below Poverty Line (BPL) families through Anna Bhagya scheme. The party has also assured that it will release a separate manifesto for the youth. The BJP, being at the helm of governance now at the Union level, is quite aware of the long-term deleterious impact of such schemes on the State Exchequer. The Congress has promised a lot of direct transfers and subsidies without working on the arithmetic of fiscal disaster in the long run. Much of the borrowing that funds these freebies is off-budget and the debt is concealed to circumvent the FRBM targets. The provision of free power, water, etc. distracts outlays from environmental and sustainable growth, renewable energy and more efficient public transport systems. During UPA 1 and UPA 2, the power sector was the biggest stakeholder in India’s chaotic bad loans, with the distorted capacity to pay by the consumers being the underlying cause in a sector which was already hit hard by missing fuel linkages, absence of power purchase agreements or PPS, insufficient equity from promoters and the steady spike in the input coal prices.
Middle-Income Groups
Removing obstructions to private enterprise, building the required infrastructure and skilled workforce, and transforming India into a globally competitive economy occupied a prominent place in BJP’s manifesto which will surely help the middle-income groups to a great extent. Still, the BJP must work more in terms of bringing budgetary relief in terms of subsidies by lowering the prices of high-profile items like LPG which hit hard on the poor and lower middle-income groups. To leave them with more savings and disposable income will be tantamount to incentivisation of consumption, thus boosting industrial growth, in turn. With numerous standard deductions and tax bills, a person in such economic rungs feels the pinch the most. The McKinsey Global Institute, which defines India’s middle class as households with real annual disposable incomes between 200,000 and 1 million rupees ($3,606 to $18,031), predicts it to grow up to 583 million, thus constituting 41 percent of the total population of India by 2025. Thus, garnering the support of the middle-income groups would be crucial for the BJP.
With certain electoral acceptance and renewed strategy, the BJP can hold onto the baton of power again in 2024. The local factors and the national-regional coalition is different in every state, and the BJP must work out on this. 2024 will create more synergy of the double-engine government, with a BJP sweep.
The author is a senior faculty in the Department of History, ARSD College, University of Delhi. Views expressed are personal.
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