Three swingers and a poll

Last week, as Karnataka’s big parties announced the names of their candidates for next month’s elections, ticket aspirants waited anxiously to see who had made it and who hadn’t.

And as you may already know, those whose names didn’t figure on those lists have started sulking and throwing tantrums. Simultaneously, criminals and policemen are donning khadi and getting into one or the other of the state's three major parties.

All of which is good entertainment, and of course the election season is always a good time for connoisseurs of drama. To add to the excitement, star campaigners are descending from all over India to do their bit for their parties.

Arun Jaitley of the BJP was in Bangalore last week. He made a suave presentation at the Taj West End to a gathering of journalists, who’d received invitations the previous day from velvet-voiced PR girls. (I was unlucky and got a call from a sober male voice).

I was among those who sat at the hotel’s opulent banquet hall and heard the BJP stalwart’s eloquent briefing. He had facts and figures ready, and reeled out numbers without as much as glancing at his notes, but what was most striking was that he spoke no ideology at all. No Hindutva, no talk about fighting corruption or Congress misrule. All he said was that Karnataka should vote for stability.

Jaitley delivered his speech like a CEO at a board meeting, such was the corporate polish of the event. But then, come to think of it, this season could well mark the advent of elections without any ideological fervour. Also, the three big players have slept with one another in the last five years, and cannot really take the pativrata tone without sounding foolish. So if you were the pragmatic type, you would say, “Ah, good, no bullshit!”

But consider the tragedy. The Karnataka assembly has 224 seats, and since the last elections did not deliver a decisive mandate, the Congress, the JD(S) and the BJP were forced to share power — and the spoils. As everyone knows, they got into opportunistic alliances, praising their partners when together, and abusing them when the good times ran out.

In 1977, after Indira Gandhi lifted the Emergency and announced elections, the rest of India sent non-Congress leaders to Delhi as MPs but Karnataka went against the tide. Again in 1978, the state voted a Congress government to power.

But the Congress joy ride jerked to an end. In 1983, Karnataka got its first non-Congress government when the Janata Party took over with Ramakrishna Hegde at the helm. The ideologies of Jayaprakash Narayan, Rammanohar Lohia (and his Kannadiga ideologue Gopala Gowda), the CPM, and the RSS had come together to form an alliance to defeat a satiated and arrogant Congress. The Karnataka voter has thus always remained inscrutable, and unpredictable.

In 1984, after Rajiv Gandhi’s death, an emotional Karnataka sent 24 Congress MPs to Delhi out of 28. Hegde dissolved his government, owning moral responsibility for his party's poor performance, and called for elections right away. Voters stunned the nation by taking a U-turn and sending his Janata Party back to power at the Vidhana Soudha. In the process, the Karnataka electorate won for itself the reputation of being wise and discerning.

One of the heroes of that inspired anti-Congress movement was Deve Gowda, who you saw, these last four years, in the role of the shrewish wife in serial marriages with the Congress and the BJP. Yes, it has been a disgraceful fall, but he is again rubbing his hands in anticipating of a hung assembly, and looking forward to more fun and intrigue.

So friends, Kannadigas and countrymen, this is going to be a battle among three big parties, and it is a battle over the millions they can rake in from real estate and mining. Happy voting, and God save you!