Karnataka polls: Narendra Modi raises decibels just as Congress-BJP shouting match was losing meaning for voters

If the leader who makes the loudest noise can win an election, Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah has already won the 12 May Assembly polls — hands down, and no hung Assembly.

In contrast, there is only feeble whining and moaning from the state’s BJP president and chief minister candidate BS Yeddyurappa. Though you can hear from somewhere above all the din an occasional growl from BJP’s national president Amit Shah, it’s soon drowned by Siddaramaiah’s roar. Now, the BJP leaders are hoping that Prime Minister Narendra Modi can steal Siddaramaiah’s thunder in the ten days before polling begins next Tuesday, and turn the tables and tablas on the Congress.

I challenge you (Rahul Gandhi) to speak for 15 minutes on the achievements of your government in Karnataka without reading from any piece of paper. You can speak in Hindi, English or your mother tongue (Italian) : PM Modi #NammaModi

— BJP (@BJP4India) May 1, 2018

At this stage of the campaign, this election is all about noise. That’s what it looks – or sounds – like at least. With the two main parties having launched their soft campaign nearly a year ago, obvious issues like Hindutva, farmers, corruption, caste, Cauvery river water sharing and development have already had their run several times over. What impact these issues left on the voters’ minds and how they will affect their choice of a party on polling day is still anybody’s guess.

Though voters are largely silent or bored or downright cynical, seeing what passes off as a campaign, most of them were already polarised on party lines long before election dates were announced. With the fight left for the undecided voters or fence-sitters – their proportion may be anywhere around 10 percent – parties are constantly trying to dredge up new issues on a daily basis with the desperateness of a man drowning in sea grabbing any flotsam for survival. The result is producing more sound than light.

It has been said that whoever takes charge of the “narrative” during an election wins it. Karnataka’s leaders are finding it easier to take care of their larynxes. All elections may inevitably end up as shouting matches, but what they shout about in Karnataka leaves plenty to be desired. As the polling day approaches, issues appear and disappear like ghosts in horror movies. In what appears to be a flat election where there is no visible, across-the-state support for either party, both seem to face a serious famine of issues to catch the fancy of voters.

While the parrot-like repetition of old themes leads to inevitable fatigue, each new issue that parties raise is lame in content, clumsy in style, bad in taste and plain boring even for election-time entertainment. Issues are raised only to be forgotten days later because they are not appealing enough. With this listless campaigning alternated by needlessly aggressive postures, both the BJP and the Congress are blundering along like headless chickens.

BJP in a worse fix

The bankruptcy of ideas is worse in the BJP, whose leaders are permanently busy reacting to what Siddaramaiah says, does or doesn’t. The party is now finding fault with Siddarmaiah for contesting from two constituencies as if it has cataclysmic consequences for the state’s politics. Haven’t many luminaries including Modi himself tried their luck in two constituencies in the past?

At some point not long ago, Siddaramaiah’s lollipop to Lingayats by turning them into a separate minority religion was expected to be a “game changer” for the Congress, along with river water disputes and the talk of Kannada identity. But after a thousand rallies and a million tweets, one hears little about these from the Congress. The party wants to try for size other things.

The almost-daily tweets from Siddaramaiah on matters ranging from the profound to the silly, purported to rip Modi into pieces, have worn off their initial novelty and have now degenerated into repetitive and nasty quibbles. Repetition can make even the best wisdom plain boring. Sample these:

This Election is also about broken promised of the @narendramodi Govt.
1 Black money didn’t become white.
2 People didn’t get Rs 15 lakh in their accounts.
3 People’s money lost value due to demonetisation. They were made to stand in line to get their own money.

— Siddaramaiah (@siddaramaiah) April 29, 2018

4 Unemployed are asked to sell Pakodas
5 International crude oil prices have fallen drastically but petrol/diesel prices keep increasing.
6 Corruption free Govt was promised, but Banks are being looted.

We are fighting election on these issues. #CongressMathomme

— Siddaramaiah (@siddaramaiah) April 29, 2018

Beating dead horses

It’s a clear dearth of ideas that is forcing Siddaramaiah to flog a dead horse like demonetisation. If demonetisation and black money were not factors in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election a year ago and in the Gujarat polls five months ago, what effect these can have in Karnataka now is a puzzle. While being music to the ears of Congress admirers, Leftist curmudgeons and other compulsive Modi-baiters, such inane campaign falls short of requirements to influence undecided voters.

Calling Modi a north-Indian “import” was another attempt at attention-grabbing by Siddaramaiah in the final phase of the campaign. The BJP’s taint of a mining scam that saw the fall of the Yeddyurappa government in 2011 is yet another.

Would G Janardhan Reddy be joining your rallies here? You have given his family & friends 8 tickets, hoping it will help BJP in 10-15 seats.

And then, you lecture us on corruption.

Please end this hypocrisy. Kannadigas aren’t wearing Kamala on their ears.

— Siddaramaiah (@siddaramaiah) April 30, 2018

But the temerity of the Congress is galling, considering that it’s not just the BJP but even the Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular) have given tickets to mining scamsters in this election.

PM’s versus CM’s performance

A common thread that may seem to run through the bewildering babble of campaign centres around performance – of Siddaramaiah as chief minister and of Modi as prime minister.

The Congress breaks into a rhapsody over how Siddaramaiah turned Karnataka into a socialist heaven inside a hell that is Modi’s India. The music that Siddaramaiah plays to say he fulfilled 158 of the 165 promises he made five years ago will soon become a ringtone of the cell phones of Congress and Communist ideologues.

The BJP’s tune, of course, is the polar opposite: The state is a putrid cesspool in an otherwise fragrant and serene India of Modi that all Indians are – or must be – proud of.

A PM-versus-CM sparring would seem pretty much like a respectable thing befitting a federal democracy, but what makes it unbecoming and even repugnant is how both sides go about trumpeting their claims. Don’t blame the voters if they want to get it over quick.

Author tweets @sprasadindia