Why Karnataka polls 2018 will be no repeat of 2013 success for Siddaramaiah

Midway through Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s term, which began in 2013, a television channel commissioned a survey – “If elections were held tomorrow, what would be the outcome?” C-Fore, the agency that conducted the survey announced that the Congress party could take as many as 120 to 132 seats in the 224-seat state Assembly. The channel that had commissioned it would not believe the results, so it decided not to telecast the survey, leaving it to C-Fore to make the results public.

But, surely, you have to concede that the outcome was unexpected – both because of who Siddaramaiah is and what he has done in Karnataka.

Siddaramaiah’s political lineage is well-known. He was in the JD(S), as one of HD Deve Gowda’s young lieutenants, until he began to feel his rise in the party was limited because Deve Gowda was promoting his sons. He joined the Congress, and he transformed it in many ways, with a combination of social justice and distributive justice tools. He projected himself as anti-intellectual (many in his own party used to refer to him as "Nidde Ramaiah" or ‘Sleepy Ramaiah’, and Kumbhakarna, after Ravan's somnolent brother”). But Siddaramaiah begged, borrowed and stole ideas to bed the Congress down to a model of development different from other states in the country.