How humble farmer reaps

His son and chief minister in-waiting, H.D. Kumaraswamy, has always been his father8217;s favourite. Ever since he took over as executive president of the JDS, he has taken an anti-Congress position and engaged the BJP, an effort which has led to 47 of the 58 JDS MLAs casting their lot with 77 of the BJP, and both parties heading towards a 8216;J038;K type8217; arrangement.

Forget the blood-is-thicker-than-water axiom. In hard political terms, it is Deve Gowda who is the mass leader in Karnataka. It is inconceivable that either his son or so many of his MLAs would dare to stage a grand revolt against him. Clearly, the former PM does not want to be seen to be doing a volte face, given the position he has held on the BJP. After all the district elections, which triggered off the present crisis, are still on.

There are many indications to suggest that he was party to the decision to go with the BJP. In the last few days Gowda himself hobnobbed with BJP leaders and called on a host of them during his two-week stay in the capital. Those he met included Vice President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and BJP chief Rajnath Singh. The JDS decision to withdraw support to Dharam Singh was not an overnight development and Gowda was obviously keeping the option open.

Karnataka comes as a shot in the arm for the BJP after Bihar. The BJP will now be in power in yet another state, that too a southern state. Dubbed as a Hindi heartland party, it had been trying to make forays into the south but without success. Now power has been handed to it on a platter.

The BJP realises the importance of wresting power from the Congress in Karnataka. That is why it readily agreed to be the junior partner to begin with, even though it is the bigger of the two. Weaning a secular party from the enemy camp to its side sends its own message to its other allies. The BJP8217;s partners, whether it was the TDP earlier, or the JDU more recently, had begun to distance themselves from it after its 2004 defeat, and have been worried about the impact of a more assertive RSS.

For the Congress, events in Karnataka have signaled the reverse message 8212; the loss of an ally and a government in a state where the BJP has never been in power. Coming in the wake of Volcker and Quattrocchi, Karnataka will demoralise the cadre on the eve of the Hyderabad session.

Possibly sensing trouble, the party leadership had given the maximum importance to Karnataka in the recent reconstitution of its apex body, the CWC, appointing a whopping six members, at the cost of other states, a decision that created widespread resentment. It is another matter that four of these CWC leaders belong to one district, and there is no one among them to represent the important Lingayat and Vokkaligga communities. It is this alliance that Deve Gowda seems to be banking on for the future. He has the support of the Vokkaliga community, to which he belongs, and the Lingayats, at one time with the Congress, swerved to the BJP in the last elections.

Wrong advice, complacency that H.D. Deve Gowda would never tie up with the BJP, and the jostling of its own leaders to settle old scores with Gowda 8212; all these have proved to be the party8217;s undoing.

Influenced by the advice of these leaders 8212; many of them are not averse to a mid term poll because it might enable them to bounce back 8212; the Congress High Command made the mistake of not meeting Gowda while he was in the capital recently. It is all very well for the Congress to start carving out an alliance with Siddaramaiah who is an icon in his community of Kurubas, who comprise five per cent of the state8217;s population. But to do it at the cost of sacrificing its government does not make sense.

Since the formation of the government in Karnataka 20 months ago, tension has been mounting between the Congress and JDS, with the growing feeling in the Congress that Gowda was riding roughshod over them. While Congress leaders have apprehended a mid term poll, they were not prepared for an alternative government in Karnataka, and that is where the JDS has upstaged the party.