Aditi Phadnis: Karnataka's kingmaker

PLAIN POLITICS/ Deve Gowda is once again a very important man in the state

As regional satraps go, there is no one to match H D Deve Gowda. The only Karnataka politician to have become prime minister, Deve Gowda has a profile in the entire state. Why he chooses to confine himself in the Hassan-Mandya-Old Mysore belt of Karnataka, immersed in sectarian Vokkaliga politics, is a mystery.

Or perhaps not. In 1996-97, when the P V Narasimha Rao government was defeated, Deve Gowda became the United Front's candidate to become prime minister "" the UF's fourth choice because the partners of the coalition wanted to check each others' ambition.

He pipped G K Moopanar to the post but could not get on with Congress president Sitaram Kesri. The Congress virtually forced the UF to replace its PM and I K Gujral was installed after a humiliating exit for Deve Gowda.

Between then and 2002, when he was elected MP from the Kanakapura Lok Sabha seat, Deve Gowda has managed to lift his southward-heading political career up by the bootstraps and could be in the enviable position of being kingmaker after May 13.

The how and why of the restoration of Deve Gowda's political power could make you laugh or cry. It is the story of a man who had everything and how easily he threw it all away.

The Janata Dal was a powerful entity in Karnataka until Deve Gowda expelled old rivals, Ramakrishna Hegde and S R Bommai from the Janata Dal, pushing them into the arms of the BJP. Hegde, who fell ill a few years later, could not give the party any direction.

His death deepened the leadership vacuum and caused MLAs from his group to hurry into the Congress, with a small number going to the BJP and Deve Gowda's JD (Secular).

Effectively, instead of consolidating the Janata family, Deve Gowda ended up strengthening the BJP in the state, and as a result, the Congress which was seen as the only real opposition to the communalism of the BJP.

The thing about Deve Gowda is, he says all the right things, but does all the wrong ones, especially when he has the chance to right the wrongs.

In 2001 when he was 'unemployed, he did a 'padayatra' around Bangalore bringing the message of the villages to the town. The issue was the killing of two farmers in police firing during an agitation over the right to tap neera from coconut trees.

He spoke of agrarian distress and suicides by farmers owing to the faulty economic policies and priorities, de-industrialisation owing to liberalisation, the growth of poverty and unemployment. Little wonder then that he won the Kanakapura seat with a big margin.

In the current political atmosphere of the state, he was the only politician to have made a sincere effort to make the suicide of farmers a serious issue.

While the Congress was going on about how farmers were killing themselves for other reasons and that suicides were not all poverty-related, Deve Gowda made it a point to visit the family of every farmer who had died, just holding their hand. He even went to North Karnataka, where he is not popular, to commiserate with the families

But the problem of drought and crop failure is not a new one. The general perception in north Karnataka is that during his chief ministership, Deve Gowda acted as chief minister for south Karnataka, depriving the north of any real development.

The perception is that he did so because North Karnataka has only a small percentage of Vokkaligas and any money spent there would go to waste.

During his prime ministership, Deve Gowda's master stroke was to give orders to create a regiment for Karnataka in the army. The 50-year-old and highly decorated Coorg Regiment was to have been redesignated the Karnataka regiment.

He thought such a regiment would make the people of the state his political slaves for the rest of his life.

Unfortunately, he was removed from prime ministership before he could force it through and the Defence Ministry quietly and thankfully buried that proposal.

The only conclusive outcome of this fiat was Deve Gowda made no friends in Coorg after this, which has a proud martial tradition and has contributed a field marshal to the Indian Army.

The story of how he shot himself in the foot goes on. Earlier this month, Deve Gowda strongly criticised the BJP for referring to the foreign origins of Sonia Gandhi "" signalling that he would not be averse to doing a deal with the Congress. He kept saying, however, that his aim was to defeat both the Congress and the BJP in the state.

So what is the role that H D Deve Gowda is going to play in the politics of Karnataka after May 13? By all reckoning, Deve Gowda might manage to get as many as 25 seats from the regions where he is powerful, out of 224 in the assembly. If the Congress can manage to win more than 80 seats, it will have no choice but to do a deal with Deve Gowda.

The problem is the presence of Urban Development Minister D K Shivakumar, right hand man of S M Krishna. Shivakumar also a Vokkaliga, contested against Deve Gowda in the Kanakapura Lok Sabha byelections two years ago and was defeated by Gowda. The two have not spoken to each other since then.

Although S M Krishna, who is inclined to be friendly with Deve Gowda, might not be averse to a tie-up with him, it is Shivakumar's who will be a roadblock. Krishna and Shivakumar have many joint projects.

This makes Deve Gowda an extremely important man in Karnataka politics. If, as Bangalore is discussing, some Lingayats in the Krishna government, feeling cheated at being left out of the action, do rebel against Shivakumar, it is possible that Deve Gowda might help in manipulating such a rebellion to ease out Shivakumar.

What might happen later, is a matter of speculation. It is possible that once again in pursuit of the policy of 'unzip mouth insert foot', Deve Gowda, might demand that Krishna be replaced.

Either way, once again history appears to be on the verge on handing Deve Gowda an opportunity. The question is whether he will be capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.