“Nero fiddled while Rome burned”. This ancient Roman saying perfectly fits the Congress high command when it comes to dealing with the deepening political crisis in Karnataka, a key remaining state where the party still governs. The high command remains in its bubble while Karnataka drifts. It is quite possible the leadership may well be engaged behind the scenes, but it has done little to resolve a deadlock that has dragged on for months. If the party high command cannot resolve the leadership crisis soon, it risks losing its flagship state in the next Assembly election. And who will be blamed then? There are no prizes for guessing.

The Locomotive Metaphor and the Missing Signal

It was against this backdrop that senior leader B.K. Hariprasad returned from Delhi after consultations with the high command and offered a vivid description of Deputy Chief Minister and state president D.K. Shivakumar or DKS. He said DKS was no longer just the “Rock” of party lore but a powerful railway engine pulling the organisation forward. The remark worked as both compliment and caution. A locomotive generates energy, speed and attention. It also produces noise, heat and pressure as it approaches a crowded platform. To paraphrase Hariprasad’s words, the current commotion inside the Karnataka Congress was not necessarily a sign of collapse but of momentum. Yet the same metaphor contained a warning. A train cannot run on two tracks at once. However strong the engine, the direction of travel depends on the signal it receives.

It is clear that the signal has been conspicuously delayed. The much-touted original understanding after the 2023 victory that the chief minister would hand over the chair midway through the five-year term to his deputy was meant to ensure a smooth journey, a handover of the baton without disruption to governance. Instead, the state has been watching an extended standoff in which both leaders assert legitimacy, now punctuated by public stray-dog jabs at those seeking clarity while the central leadership refrains from an open, time-bound decision. It only reinforces the high command’s image of a leadership that hesitates, a leadership that likes to live in its bubble, a perception of inaction. And don’t we all know that in electoral politics, perception often travels faster than performance.

This is particularly striking because the state government has achievements in welfare guarantees, rural consumption, investment appeal and Bengaluru’s tech draw. In purely administrative terms, the train is moving. But politics is not measured only by delivery. It is measured by clarity of command. When the question of succession becomes a permanent noise, it begins to overshadow the record of governance.

A National Test Disguised as a State Story

The party high command cannot afford that in its present dire national condition. Its geography of governance has shrunk so much that an ordinary citizen will have to think hard to name the states where the Congress still governs. Karnataka is the only large southern state where the party commands a full majority on its own strength. Telangana is recent and still consolidating. Himachal Pradesh is small. In this landscape, instability in Karnataka is not a regional story anymore. It is a test of the high command’s leadership itself. It is a test to determine if the Congress can manage authority where its party actually governs. Mr Hariprasad’s formulation that only Mallikarjun Kharge, Sonia Gandhi and the high command can determine the final direction was therefore more than a routine expression of loyalty. It was a reminder that in a national party the tracks are laid at the centre, at the party high command. State leaders provide the drive, but the route comes from the command structure. By insisting that the high command is neither helpless nor indifferent, Mr Hariprasad was attempting to reassure a cadre that had begun to read delay as distance and indifference or even lack of courage to take a firm decision.

Yet every month that the issue remains unresolved is likely to strengthen the opposition’s narrative that the Congress is internally preoccupied and that its leadership in Delhi is weak. The BJP does not need to win the argument immediately. It only needs to keep the focus on Congress disunity, to keep the narrative of indecision and infighting on the boil. The Janata Dal (Secular), though reduced, is watching for openings in the Vokkaliga belt. The longer the Congress appears to be negotiating with itself, the more it risks turning a comfortable mandate into a competitive election. It will be a self-inflicted tragedy.

This is why the powerful locomotive imagery resonates beyond its rhetorical flourish. An engine is valuable not because it is powerful but because it pulls the entire formation in a single direction, doesn’t it? Luckily enough, in Karnataka today, the party still has the advantage of incumbency, a functioning government and a fragmented opposition. For the Congress high command, a decisive, transparent handling of the Karnataka transition would send a signal that the party can manage power as effectively as it mobilises opposition. Continued ambiguity sends the opposite message. The risk, the DKS camp might argue, is not of an immediate derailment but of a gradual backsliding. If the Congress allows a perception to take root that it cannot resolve its own internal squabbles, it hands its rivals a narrative that will run all the way to the next assembly election.

And that would be rather unfortunate. Karnataka was projected as the state from which the Congress would demonstrate a model of governance, social welfare and organisational unity. The CM camp might say that today the train coaches are still full, the engine running and the track still clear. It is not the strength of the engine that determines the journey. It is the driver that commands it. DKS, hoping for the change of guard, wants to be that driver.

Assembly polls in Karnataka

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