On May 13, the Congress Party notched a major election win—a decisive single-party majority in the southern state of Karnataka—earning the highest vote share of any party in the state since 1989. For the Congress, which is starved of election victories, this result could not have come at a better time as the country gears up for national elections early next year. The incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) put in a disappointing performance, one that is likely to prompt some soul-searching as the party regroups for another round of regional polls this fall.
However, one veteran observer of the state’s politics warns that we should be wary of extrapolating too much from these results. Journalist Sugata Srinivasaraju made these comments on last week’s episode of Grand Tamasha, a weekly podcast co-produced by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Hindustan Times.
“The question that I often get asked is how much of this election is going to...influence the 2024 results. I have been consistent in my response to that question, which is that it has very little to do with what may happen in 2024,” said Srinivasaraju, author of several books including Furrows in a Field: The Unexplored Life of HD Deve Gowda. “[This] was a very locally fought election. In fact, it was so very local that none of the big issues that we generally read in Indian newspapers such as crony capitalism…or the victimhood of Rahul Gandhi and the Bharat Jodo Yatra…or Hindutva, for that matter, figured greatly.”
Srinivasaraju emphasized that the recently completed poll was driven largely by the anti-incumbent mood of the electorate. “This election was not an ideological election where people were reacting to ideological issues, it was an anger election,” he told Grand Tamasha host Milan Vaishnav. “People were fed up with the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] government, they wanted to get rid of them, and they gave their vote to the party that was most likely to form the government.”
{{/usCountry}}Srinivasaraju emphasized that the recently completed poll was driven largely by the anti-incumbent mood of the electorate. “This election was not an ideological election where people were reacting to ideological issues, it was an anger election,” he told Grand Tamasha host Milan Vaishnav. “People were fed up with the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] government, they wanted to get rid of them, and they gave their vote to the party that was most likely to form the government.”
{{/usCountry}}Although many observers have pointed out that even Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s intense campaigning could not save the BJP government of Basavaraj Bommai, Srinivasaraju says this line of thinking does not give Modi enough credit. “If Modi had not intervened the way he did—he came, he spoke, he did his duty, and left the rest to the people—I think they would have performed even [more] poorly,” he said. “It would be wrong to say that Modi did not contribute; Modi contributed here to save the party from absolute annihilation or humiliation.”