karntk result

Invisible after defeat Monday June 16 2008 12:36 IST
S GurumurthyThe Karnataka polls outcome is not a replay of Gujarat for the BJP. For the Congress, it is, but with a difference. The response of the Congress party to the Karnataka result was precisely the same as when the Gujarat results were out. In both cases, with the top leadership running away from owning defeats, the party had to begin a desperate search to identify a proxy loser from within to save the real losers! As the Karnataka results started trickling in, it was clear that the BJP was in the lead from the word go, as in Gujarat. The BJP won Gujarat then and Karnataka now. Yes, in electoral terms, the BJP is forming the government in Karnataka, as it did in Gujarat six months earlier. Yet it was no repeat of Gujarat where the BJP won handsomely in numbers and more differently, in quality.In Gujarat it was more than just a win or lose situation for both Congress and BJP. Sure of victory, Sonia Gandhi had pitted herself against Modi, by taking on Modi personally, characterising him as a 'merchant of death'. More. The 'secular' media had predicted and even worked for Modi's defeat. Some of Modi's former friends prayed and obliquely, why even openly,worked with Sonia's party for his defeat. Encouraged by them and convinced that Modi was gone, the Congress party was eagerly awaiting the results with tons of crackers to celebrate 'secular' Sonia's victory over 'communal' Modi. But when the results came, it needed no seer to identify who the winner was, and who the loser. The victory doubtless belonged to Modi, who gracefully credited it to the party.But, with Sonia Gandhi running away from owning defeat, the Congress became desperate. Since the emergence of a victor implies the existence of a loser, the party had to find a proxy loser to save the real loser Sonia from ignominy. Its search yielded one Bharat Solanki, the little known state Congress president of the party, as the scapegoat. He came on television not only to own up to defeat, but also to certify that 'the central party leadership' read Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi was no way responsible for it. Imagine Modi had lost and the Congress had won, would Sonia have shared the honour with anyone else? Would poor Solanki have been seen anywhere near the TV cameras?Now come to Karnataka. The state was also the first testing ground to measure the electoral worth of the 'flagship schemes' the Rs 50,000 crore National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) and the Rs 60,000 crore farm loan waiver. Additionally, like in Gujarat, in Karnataka too the Congress offered the bribe of free colour TV sets to voters. Despite being an ally of the DMK,which successfully bribed voters in Tamil Nadu with colour TV sets, the Congress had no luck with TV sets bribe offers. In Gujarat,when Narendra Modi was asked how he would match the colour TV offer of the Congress, he stunningly replied that, if elected, he would send notices to tax evaders! Gujaratis rejected the colour TV bribe and overwhelmingly voted for the man who wished to send compliance notices to tax dodgers! Thus, besides NREGS and the farm loan waiver, colour TV sets too failed to fetch votes for the Congress. As in Gujarat, so in Karnataka. And what did Rahul Gandhi, who substituted for Sonia in Karnataka, deliver?Rahul got for the Congress in Karnataka what Sonia secured for the party in Gujarat. In Gujarat and earlier in UP, Rahul had campaigned as the Youth Congress leader. Ahead of the Karnataka polls he had become the general secretary of the party, the most powerful one. Some in the party had even proclaimed him as the future Prime Minister. He began a 'Discover India' tour of the country. Rahul Gandhi's Karnataka leg of that tour for five days in March 2008 became the launch pad for the Congress election campaign, claimed the media. Rahul Gandhi was accompanied by an army of media men. They waxed lyrical on how he was repeatedly breaching security to 'connect' with the people. They also brought out his human side and wrote about how he spent his nights in Dalit and Scheduled Tribe homes in Karnataka. See what the party got from him in the end. In Karnataka, out of the 36 seats reserved for Scheduled Castes, the Congress got six yes just six. The BJP, which the media projects as not so friendly to Dalits, got twentyone yes, 21!In Gadag and Bagalkot districts where Rahul campaigned, the Congress did not get a single seat. In Hubli-Dharwad districts, that were on his campaign trail, the party just got one and in Bijapur where also he went, it got three out of eight. Yet the defeat, either in the places he visited or in Karnataka as a whole, cannot be Rahul's.It is the party's but not the central party's because that would take the defeat close to the Gandhis! S M Krishna, who gave up his comfortable job as Governor of Maharashtra to lead the Congress in the state and was promptly marginalised, finally owned up to the defeat. And like Bharat Solanki, he certified that the central party read Rahul in addition to Sonia was not responsible for the defeat!Thus, whether it is the election in Bihar or UP, Himachal or Uttaranchal, Gujarat or Karnataka, victors who belonged to the BJP, the BSP or the JD (U) were known. But in each of these states where the Congress lost, proxies had to be invented as losers to hook the blame on. The reason is self-evident. Sonia or Rahul can only own success and victory. Defeats thus became orphans. The party runs an informal orphanage which owns up the orphans 'namely, failures and defeats' deserted by the leadership. Bharat Solankis and S M Krishnas become their caretakers. The philosophy of the party is clear. Victories belong to 10 Janpath, where the Gandhis reside. Defeats are hooked on the branch managers of the party so that the Gandhis remain invincible.Compare them, who run away from defeat, with the leaders of the BJP, the main adversary of the Congress. When the BJP was reduced to just two seats in 1984 the whole party owned the defeat.It rebuilt itself, in less than a decade, into a victorious party. The reason why it could do needs no discourse. The party owned up the defeat and so did its leaders, who became united in defeat. Look at the DMK or AIADMK. Neither Karunanidhi nor Jayalalithaa would refuse to own up the party's defeat as theirs. It is equally true of a Mulayam or Laloo. They have all owned up and worked to win again and won.Look at the record of Sonia's own party, the Congress. Indira Gandhi owned her defeat in 1977 and Rajiv Gandhi his in 1989. But, did Sonia ever own the moral responsibility for party's defeat in 1999 Lok Sabha elections or in the different Assembly elections? No. After every defeat the invincible Gandhis become invisible.QED: Leaders, who rush to accept garlands of victory and run away when defeated, are non-leaders. And precisely such nonleaders profess to lead the nation today.