Congress fought well and won the battle in Karnataka but can it also deliver on the promises it made during the campaign?  

All is well that ends well. This is how one can sum up the political drama staged at the national capital during the last three days as part of the selection of the chief minister of Karnataka where the Congress staged a spectacular victory by bagging 135 seats. The race for the chief minister’s post was nothing new or unexpected. But the High Command of the party managed to resolve the issue without much heart-burning among the contestants. On Saturday, Siddaramaiah would be sworn in as the chief minister and the process of government formation is likely to commence without delay.

The immediate task awaiting the chief minister and his deputy D K Shivakumar is to regain the trust and confidence of the people in the State who were antagonized and tortured by corruption in big places during the last four years of BJP rule. And the voters are waiting with bated breath and anticipation for the fulfilment of the promises made by the Congress leadership in the run-up to the election. Both Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar are left with no break from the hectic electioneering as they have to get the State ready for the 2024 Lok Sabha election.The victory of the Congress in the Karnataka polls has no doubt, rejuvenated the Grand Old Party across the nation. A sense of indecisiveness and uncertainty are discernible in the BJP camp as the leadership is groping in the dark to understand what went against them. Though some political pundits attribute the Congress win to communalism, they are silent about the asinine communalism which was the platform on which the top leadership of the Hindutwa party solicited a mandate for the second term.There is a sense of relief among the Opposition camp as the Congress won hearts and influenced the voters. If the Congress leadership, especially Sonia Gandhi, could take the regional satraps into confidence, there is no reason to doubt about a 2004 model of unity and a UPA victory. It is not the Nobel Prize for Peace or a chair in the security council of the United Nations that the man in the street need. To understand the unhappiness and discontentment among the people, all one has to do is compare the prices of petrol, diesel, cooking gas, rice and wheat that prevailed before 2014 and post-2014.

Ten years is a long time in politics and rhetoric has no place. One cannot keep on blaming Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi for what Ambani and Adani are doing now.It is good that the nation is getting a new parliament building in the coming months.

A person, no less than the spouse of the finance minister of the country, has said that the nation’s economy is in ruins. The question is are we to continue clapping to the statistics of no value read out from teleprompters?

The sudden transfer of Kiran Rijiju from the ministry of law to the department of earth sciences is laughable. Having served the Government with sincerity and dedication, Rijiju deserved a reasonably good farewell. But that has been the modus operandi of Veeru and Dheeru during the last decade.With India as the current chair of the G20 countries, Prime Minister Kishida and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will have an exceptional opportunity to discuss the issues faced by the ‘Global South’ including global health and digitalisation.

There is an acute economic disparity between the two worlds— 'Global North’ and ‘Global South’ which has clearly been visible during Covid-19. Also, while the Western world managed to survive the food crisis amidst the war in Ukraine, countries in the ‘Global South’ faced a shortage of food and fuel.

(The write is senior journalist. The views expressed are personal)