Karnataka Election Results: Congress cracks the victory code, BJP’s double engine strategy blunted

Congress will have to put its best foot forward and stay united to convert this win into an advantage in the Lok Sabha polls.

The verdict in Karnataka comes as a much-needed relief to the Indian National Congress. Having run a near-flawless campaign, the grand old party should take many lessons from this comprehensive victory.

Consequently, the result also exemplifies how the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is not invincible as many people make the party out to be. The limitations of “Brand Modi” in turning losing campaigns around – after the Prime Minister invested a lot of his energy and time into it – was also demonstrated in the process.

As for the Janata Dal (Secular), its chances of having any stake in power was totally obliterated, after the voters reposed faith in the Congress by giving it a thumping majority.

Unity Lesson For Congress

Apart from bringing the BJP juggernaut to an abrupt halt in its march towards southern India, the win comes as a morale booster for the Congress in the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The first and foremost lesson for the Congress in this win is the pertinence of staying united.

Both the Leader of Opposition Siddaramaiah and Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) chief DK Shivakumar presented a picture of unity despite being contenders for chief ministership, and such a symbolic show of unity went a long way in boosting the prospects of the party.

A corollary to this would be the significance of having regional leaders and promoting them on merit alone. Both Siddaramaiah – who came from the JD (S) stock – and Shivakumar whose promotion as PCC chief was critical to the win embody the spirit of the Congress regional satraps of yore.

Local Trumps National

A second lesson for the Congress would be the virtue of getting quickly off the blocks in election campaigns. The Congress caught the BJP off-guard by launching its campaign well in advance, even as elections were underway in other states.

A third lesson is to make state assembly elections as local as possible, taking up the bread-and-butter issues of people. By aggressively branding the Bommai goverment as “40 percent commission sarkara”, the Congress campaign found resonance across Karnataka.

Such a strategy also blunts the appeal of PM Modi in assembly elections. On cue, even Rahul Gandhi did not bring up the issue of Adani into the campaign barring once, which ensured that the election was fought on issues such as corruption, inflation, jobs, social justice and welfare.

The welfare promises are a part and parcel of taking up such issues, but as the results in Gujarat demonstrated some months ago, guarantees alone do not work in the absence of local leadership and sustained campaigns.

Read more on our Karnataka Election Results coverage a bleak future for the party

The Congress was still behind the BJP in local mobilisation but getting everything else right meant that this factor didn’t hobble the party’s prospects.

Lessons For The BJP

As for the BJP, the results come as a huge reality check to its soaring ambitions. From engineering defections and conjuring a government in 2019, to replacing BS Yediyurappa with Basavaraj Bommai in 2021, the saffron party will be left to introspect on many of its decisions in the last four years.

Providing good governance and grooming regional leaders not dependent on the charisma of Narendra Modi should also dawn upon the party. Apart from the diminishing returns of Modi’s campaigns in hyper-local campaigns, the overuse of Hindutva as a tool is also evident from the results.

As it was demonstrated in West Bengal a couple of years ago, the Hindutva plank may not work as easily in these states as it does in the cow belt, for instance. The people of Karnataka also taught a lesson to the PM after he sought to communalise the campaign by joining issue with the Congress manifesto promise on banning extremist organisations such as the Bajrang Dal.

The BJP’s efforts to transport its experiment of subsuming powerful caste identities to Karnataka also failed to work, although the saffron party is likely to keep at it, as part of its long-term strategy.

Another important lesson learned for the BJP would be the limited appeal of big infrastructure projects if it cannot positively affect the livelihoods of people. Whereas people are all for expressways and airports, these become redundant if it isn’t accompanied by welfare measures.

As with its “India Shining” campaign in the 2004 Lok Sabha election, the BJP thought it could prevail by highlighting the big-ticket projects but Karnataka has a huge rural bloc which weren’t influenced by it.

Marginalisation Of JD(S)

The JD(S) finds itself further marginalised in Karnataka politics with this result and it presages a bleak future for the party, especially in the wake of Deve Gowda’s advanced age. The next assembly election could well turn bipolar if this trend persists.

Congress will have to put its best foot forward and stay united to convert this win into an advantage in the Lok Sabha polls, while a chastened BJP will get back to the drawing board on its plans down south.

Anand Kochukudy is a Kerala-based journalist and columnist. Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.