Early Fall or 2028 Exit?

 

If you ask me what’s happening in Karnataka Congress these days, I would say it resembles a Punjabi wedding buffet: too many people in line, too little food, and everyone pretending to be civil while quietly elbowing each other in the ribs. The Congress High Command, like the legendary grandmother who distributes sweets according to her mood, has once again produced its favourite toy – the rattle. They hand it to one faction, and while that group is busy shaking it, the other walks away with the mithai box and the chief minister's chair.

This is not new. Congress has been running like this longer than most of its leaders have been alive. From Chhattisgarh to Rajasthan, the formula is the same: keep everyone fighting, keep everyone insecure, and keep Delhi indispensable. The High Command operates on the age-old Delhi principle: keep them begging, keep them loyal. And if the rumours of agents carrying messages like secret love letters — only to blackmail later — are true, then the Congress office in Delhi may as well hang a board saying: emotional manipulation done here.

During a trip to Rajasthan, I met a veteran Congressman-turned-BJP-leader who explained the difference between the two parties with the clarity of a sober man and the bitterness of a jilted lover. He said Congress has no ideology — only a habit of calling itself secular, which, in my opinion, is like calling oneself handsome: if you need to say it, it’s probably not true. Congress survived on social coalitions, he reminded me — the kind you’d find in Sonagachi, where every kind of human story exists under one roof. Nobody asked about ideology there; everyone asked about survival. Congress did the same.

But then came Rahul Gandhi, who tried to impose ideology like a school principal enforcing discipline on students who were already smoking behind the bicycle stand. The booth-level workers, the real blood vessels of any party, melted away. The Congress tent, once large enough for saints and sinners alike, now has holes through which only sycophants enter and everyone else escapes.

The BJP, on the other hand, runs on loyalty — sometimes frighteningly so. Their voters do not flirt. They marry and stay married. Ask Kalyan Singh or Uma Bharti; when they left home, the voters didn’t follow them. They stayed with the BJP like a dutiful spouse who knows the family name matters more than individual tantrums.

So will Karnataka become another Maharashtra? Will D.K. Shivakumar pull off a political heist dramatic enough to make even Bollywood jealous? He reportedly has 40 MLAs “secured,” a word that in Indian politics could mean anything from moral persuasion to luxury apartments with fancy faucets. But 40 is not 50 or 60, and the arithmetic of betrayal is expensive: almost 3,000 crore rupees expensive, if one believes the whispers in Bengaluru’s political corridors.

Then there is the Lingayat factor. The BJP hurt itself by sidelining Yediyurappa, and Karnataka punished them. But politics, like old love, has a habit of returning when least expected. If Congress collapses under its own ego and unpaid bills of promises, BJP will not hesitate to collect the spoils.

Will Siddaramaiah survive? Will Shivakumar rebel? Will the Congress split? My guess: the Congress will crack before it collapses. Personality clashes are already louder than governance. Karnataka will change governments, the only suspense is whether it happens with a bang now or quietly in 2028.

One thing is sure: Congress is a party of men, not ideas. And men, unlike ideologies, have ambitions, tempers, and very fragile egos.