What the Polls Foretell
There is a sense of déjà vu in the media analyses of last week’s Karnataka election result. The Congress’ return to power in the neighbouring state after a hiatus of seven years has to some extent derailed the smug calculation that given the UPA’s battered image at the Centre, the BJP would somehow survive the voter’s wrath. It didn’t. The explanation has probably more to do with the voter’s instinctive desire for decency in public life which results in a punishing verdict against corruption, cronyism and communalism, in every other election. Some political analysts have credited the new Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah with drafting out a perceptive pre-election strategy for the Congress that centred on “social engineering” the OBC, Dalit and minority vote, detouring from its previous focus on the influential Lingayats and the Vokkaligas, as if voters are programmed to a “caste” formula.
Nonetheless, the Karnataka result has some interesting parallels to Goa March 2012, when Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar was in the spotlight for what was seen by many as his “social realignment” success in last year’s election. Riding cockily on that performance, the BJP sent out four of its “Christian” MLAs on the Karnataka campaign trail last month, to attempt to win over the minority voter in Mangalore, where Catholic churches had been specifically targeted for attacks by right-wing groups under the BJP government. Michael Lobo, Glenn Ticlo, Carlos Almeida and Nilesh Cabral with some BJP functionaries, also managed to call on Mangalore Bishop Aloysius Paul D’Souza. The BJP had tried to lobby the office of the Goa Archbishop before the poll here too, though the Goa church has officially denied any such meetings took place. But to try and impress upon voters in Karnataka that the BJP and its hardcore saffron affiliates had done the minorities no harm there, seemed like overplaying one’s hand, as Calangute MLA Michael Lobo, who tried to labour the point, learnt. Who then, had been responsible for the Mangalore church attacks, the media asked him. In fact last week’s result said it all. The BJP lost all three seats in Mangalore to the Congress.
Faced with the prospects of a complete slide in Karnataka ~ even the BJP was taken by surprise by the extent of the defeat which saw it lose 70 seats from its 110 tally in 2008 ~ the saffron party sent in Gujarat Chief Minister and PM candidate hopeful Narendra Modi to work his charm on the Karnataka voter. It didn’t work. Modi campaigned only in Bangalore and in Belgaum and Mangalore in the second phase. But Karnataka is no indication of what one can expect electorally from Lok Sabha 2014, however much the result might have buoyed a jaded and limping UPA. The BJP may yet decide to take the big gamble on Modi in a bid to polarise the vote. For there is a large section of voter out there that prefers to look beyond Modi’s divisive politics and focus only on what he is projected to have achieved in governance. What for now seems clear though is that the time is ticking for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Congress at the Centre.
The civic poll results here on Monday offered little respite to the Congress and its discredited leaders. The BJP-MGP combine managed to wrest control of both the Ponda and Sanquelim municipal councils, leaving the Congress in the dust. The crushing defeat of former home minister Ravi Naik’s Ponda Vikas Samiti and the voter’s rejection of his son, Roy is a clear signal that the Congress needs to find newer and more credible faces if it hopes to inch back into political reckoning at the grassroots level. Though the Congress fared a little better in Sanquelim, where Vishwajit Rane managed to get four candidates through to the BJP’s six, this is still is a long way off the complete sway the Ranes once had on this part of North Goa. Clearly the BJP is marching in. But panchayats and municipal councils in Goa have been known to sway with the pendulum of power. And currently, the scales are tilted the BJP way till 2017.
