You can’t keep a good man down. As Karnataka’s future rainbow coalition takes shape, Gowdas, Valmikis and Lingayats casting about for new allies, the flashpoint in the state remains the dusty mining town of Bellary. Whoever wins or loses this town in what will be the 20th bypoll since this government rode to power on the voters’ hope for a better future, this town, which has become a byword across the nation for illegal mining, and corruption and the Reddy brothers and motorcycle rallies, will in one way or the other, have a say over who rules Karnataka.
And it all boils down to one man — Sreeramulu. Ironic, that it should come to this. It was here in this sun-baked rocky terrain, where the seeds of the BJP’s resurgence were sown, after Sonia Gandhi, who had finally accepted her role as the inheritor of the Gandhi mantle, trounced Sushma Swaraj in ’99, but left the door open for a young man, who worked for Sushma to decide that this is what he wanted to be — a politician.
Eleven years later, Sreeramulu is squaring the circle. The ground beneath his feet maybe shifting again. Seismic. Slippery. But the political alignments that are being forged today will ensure this is no longer even a two horse race as the party that rules today, looks set to fragment, to implode as the others wait, hoping to wallow in the afterglow, hoping to pick up the pieces and form anew.
Any politician worth his salt, who hasn’t got his strategy in place for the elections that Deve Gowda, for one, believes will happen in May 2012, a full year ahead of schedule, will be left behind. If Gowda believes it, can the others be far behind?
No question that he’s the man to watch, this Gowda giant, quietly strategising on how to capitalize on the disarray in the saffron ranks. He’s looking to boost his own numbers, to power him back to the role he loves best — kingmaker, puppeteer; while he nudges his wayward family back to the straight and narrow, safeguarding the much sullied reputation of his sons who have had little compunction about dishing out the dirt. Except, they must now contend with the muck thrown at their own door.
For the Don of Padmanabhanagar, the wipe-out that reduced his Janata Dal (Secular) to flailing about helplessly on the fringes, shunned by all, when they had only a paltry 20 seats as collateral, cannot bear repeating. That Gowda works the phones to allies across the country, across party lines is no secret. No surprise then, some say, that he has reached out to Sreeramulu, the BJP’s nemesis.
Whether the Gowda-Sreeramulu connect is true or not, is hardly moot. What matters is how powerful and epochal a fusing of the Vokkaliga mind and Valmiki body could be. That’s a goodly chunk of the body politic. And Gowda’s decision not to field a candidate against Sreeramulu, reportedly close to his son Revanna, will automatically give the Reddy acolyte an unexpected bonus of 5000 votes.
It’s clearly not a done deal, and will not be palpable till December comes round and the results of the Bellary bypoll are in. When some say Sreeramulu will walk away with BJP legislators from four districts, the first finger to be pulled out of the leaky dyke. As the muck raking on the Reddys and Sreeramulu continues apace by a BJP that has finally come alive to the threat posed by Bellary once again, this much must be said of the other man who could be central to the BJP’s demise, and has remained impervious to the party’s ardent wooing — Sreeramulu.
He may have risen from the backlanes, a storied saga of rags to riches with more than a hint of thuggery and arm-twisting thrown in. But as loyalty and friendship go, it’s commendable that he has stayed true to his mentor Gali Janardhan Reddy (yes, yes, Gali’s Ramulu’s banker too).
Sreeramulu clearly fills a vacuum. The lack of governance in vast swathes of our state, leaves the door wide open for the politics of patronage to flourish. The maharajas and chieftains of yore have given way to the netas of today.
Hence, Sreeramulu. Hence, the Reddys. It’s a lesson that the fragmented Congress in the state has clearly forgotten. Party conclaves and high sounding slogans that shout unity when they are, in reality, at daggers drawn, are not the fix. The malaise that eats away into the party here in the state is that it doesn’t give the bright minds enough room to grow and attain the kind of stature that will bring the right-thinking citizenry back to the party fold.
But it’s only a part of the ill-fitting jigsaw that is an unstable Karnataka in 2012; the key piece, the ruling BJP, runs the risk of falling off the map altogether, not least at the behest of a furious former chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa, angered by the manner in which he was scorned by his party’s powers that be. His 25 days of enforced incarceration have helped hone a strategy that will see him either sink or swim. His party? That remains to be seen. The decision to back down from being front and centre of the Bellary campaign is central to his post-jail persona.
Even if he was the one who brought in the legislation that first put the “finished ore’ cat among the mine rich Reddy pigeons, an all too obvious attempt to shut down the tap of the Reddy cash flow, even if he is seen as the flawed genius behind the transfer of key members of the Lokayukta investigating team, BSY’ s communication lines with the Reddys remained open. And he has used them, over and over, to counter the JD(S)’ toppling game. But natural that BSY doesn’t want to be seen as having played a role in Sreeramulu’s defeat. Or for that matter, his victory. With the second being far more likely, the former chief minister has even less interest in having his unblemished track record as the giant-killer, ‘tallest’ Lingayat leader etc. being sullied in any way.
But this remains essentially a BSY survival kit. Where does it leave the BJP?
With the title ‘former CM’ no more than a moniker, the spate of transfers and appointments under D.V. Sadananda Gowda’s baton are said to emanate from BSY’s door. A BSY, who brooks no interference, who wants the party to cleave to him, and who has demonstrated the solid backing he enjoys among his core group of some 40 legislators and more. This man is not going to go gently into the night. An angry RSS or an astute Advani can at best, fume. So back to the central question - post-Bellary, will he forge his own path, separate from the party that made him what he is today?
Insiders say he has made it known that, sick of the carping by his rivals, chiefly led by his bete noire Ananth Kumar whose proximity to Advani has led partly to the current estrangement with the patriarch, the only voice BSY might heed, is that of party president Nitin Gadkari. If that.
December. When the winds of change blow, and some people will build walls, others windmills.. And when the wind shifts, some will change with the direction of the wind, others will adjust their sail. When, anything is possible.
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