State of Play: Shah shatters Siddaramaiah plan, no Lingayat cross-over to Congress?

Amit Shah, the BJP’s electoral ‘maester’ strides across the political firmament like a Colossus today, crushing everything in his path. When the Congress’ smooth operator Ahmed Patel, buoyed by the BJP’s over-confidence and last minute blundering, won his one seat and made it look like he’d won the whole state, it was just a blip on the Shah radar. An irritant. Another fly to be swatted away.

The battle ahead, the real battle, is for all of Gujarat… And, the entire southern peninsula that if Shah has its way, will be subsumed in a sea of saffron - Tamil Nadu’s AIADMK factions, Kerala’s killing fields of Kannur, all ripe for the picking. That is the ultimate goal. Can Shah pull off Gujarat by bludgeoning his own party workers into submission, playing the clever mind games that keep the opposition guessing, Patidar unease or not?

Watching Mr. Shah up close and personal in Varanasi, when Prime Minister Modi first set his eyes on the seat that shouts Hindu India, and how Shah won that for him, cleverly co-opting the Apna Dal and the critical OBC vote, brought home the man’s masterly poll management skills, that he has since demonstrated over and over.

Only Indira Gandhi came close to Shah’s “I am here to break the opposition, not build them” mantra.

Here in Karnataka, where Shah made an exceedingly perceptive remark on the Lingayat imbroglio, which if I was Chief Minister Siddaramaiah would greatly worry me, one has little doubt that the sharp-talking Rajya Sabha MP is leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else.

“When the votes are counted, the Lingayat issue will also end,” Shah, smilingly told a bunch of journalists last week. One put it down to over-confidence at first. Surely Shah had to be repeating the views of his BJP chelas, the ‘good news’ guys who never ever serve up the ugly truth.

But Shah didn’t come this far by blindly accepting what he’s told. Behind the Amit Shah legerdemain, is a surprisingly, better than expected understanding of this state – if not, country’s electoral map - and the complicated balance sheet of caste and community that not everyone gets immediately in this India of multiple identities.

Let’s take a look at the Lingayat versus Lingayat strategy that Mr Siddaramaiah, a man who has fought in the caste trenches and fought dirty, and what he’s thrown into this electoral cauldron, months before the state goes to the polls. Thus far, offering a religion card to a section of the Lingayats has everyone in the Congress lulled into believing it was so clever, it had the BJP stunned into stupefied silence, unable to stomach the possibility of the Congress hiving off even a percentage of the Lingayat votes. Since the Veerendra Patil sack, it has always gone to the anti-Congress camp, from JD(U) to the BJP.

One doesn’t know how much of the newly awoken Kumbhakarna in Siddaramaiah comes from the prodding and poking of the Rahul Gandhi appointed Congress manager, K.C.Venugopal. But clearly, the perception is that after four years of somnolence under the benign eye of Digvijay Singh, this is a new Siddaramaiah who’s striking out, playing with every hand he’s got.

The result? The card of Kannada identity that offsets Narendra Modi, the Hindi–speaking northerner (I know, I know, he’s from Gujarat) trying to impose alien Hindi values on the south, is electoral gold. It’s the classic ‘us versus them’, ‘outsider versus the native’ narrative that the PM himself has used to great effect in the past.

Siddaramaiah is, importantly, also shoring up his own strength within his own party. Not only has he had the Congress consolidate behind him, he has steadily eaten into the JD(S) bastions by bringing in some of his old party’s key players.

Now, with the Indira Canteens – and the black and white posters of Indira Gandhi, where Siddaramaiah invokes an ‘amma’ who I’m not sure is as linked to the concept of freebies as the late TN CM Jayalalitha and her poll-winning bag of goodies is - the Karnataka Congress supremo may have another sure-fire winner on his hands. This Rs 10 a meal ploy cuts across caste, creed, every nomenclature. It is aimed, not at the Kannadiga in the city alone, as much as the masses, the urban poor, the lower middle class, that floating population of the newbie IT-BT first time job hunter, the working class, students of voting age, all of whom see PM Modi as the answer to all their ills, the man who will make their lives better.

Here’s the thing. It may only be days since the canteens opened, but the young professional, who can halve his expenses on food, may just reward the ‘Amma’ – in this case, the Congress’ amma - with a vote and help the Congress pry the city back from the BJP.

It may still be a tough call though. Throw as many sops as you want at Bengaluru, but, given the insensitivity of the ministers in charge of the city, particularly when they dismiss recent floods in the low-lying south and east as nothing, when hundreds of homes and offices and streets simply disappeared under water – including our office –then, you only negate everything that Siddarmaiah has attempted to do for the city, in terms of metros and rail connectivity and free food.

What’s happened in Ejipura-Koramangla-HSR area could happen anywhere else in the city. After all, most of Bengaluru sits on lake-beds, and unless there’s a proper plan to fix the 100 year old sewage pipes and unclog drains, and place garbage disposal on top of the CM’s to-do list as much as fixing the terrible roads and pot-holes caused by shoddy, corrupt contractors with links to politicians, the Congress can kiss Bengaluru goodbye.

As for the indifferent power supply, not just to the cities – fix the transformers, Mr D K Shivakumar - but to the villages during the drought in the north, it will all come back to haunt the Congress government.

The caste vote? Shah may dismiss his visit to the Adichunchungiri math as nothing more than a courtesy visit, but the fall-out of the ill-timed raids on DKS, is the alienation of the Vokkaligas. Yes, the Vokkaligas, don’t vote just for the JD(S) and the Congress. The BJP needs them too.

Nobody will admit to this either, but as Siddaramaiah goes full throttle against the BJP, dredging up old cases against BSY, and one hears there are more coming against other BJP leaders,and just as many central agencies dust off cases against the state Congress leaders, daubing the Siddu government as corrupt, BSY’s importance to the BJP can only grow.

Be warned, Mr Chief Minister, victimise BSY and you could lose even the fraction of the Lingayat vote that you are vying for. Even dredging up the previous unstable three BJP chief minister-run BJP government may not work. BSY may no longer be the sprightly, feisty fighter of yore but his biggest USP will always be that he is the face of the Lingayats in the state. The united Lingayats.

The Chief Minister may find that despite the noise by an ambitious M.B.Patil, the forward community may not necessarily want to be just another caste in the Congress’ collection of OBC-Minorities-Ahinda mix. LAhinda? Not, when they can be THE community that calls the shots through the BJP.

And this is why one must doff one’s hat to the Master… Shah, the outsider, understands the way the Lingayat mindset works. For all his harsh north Indian ways – ticking off respected BJP leaders like schoolchildren – Amit Shah could prove to be Siddaramaiah’s nightmare. Still expecting a Lingayat cross over?