In the days after the Karnataka verdict, B.S. Yeddyurappa has been basking in the attention of the national media and deservedly so. But the Karnataka leader who led his party to victory in the southern state has come up against some pretty stiff competition. Accolades have also been flowing to Arun Jaitley, the BJP’s election manager for Karnataka.

To see the other side of Jaitley’s halo — at last count he had managed nine state elections for his party and his success rate is envied by all — meet Prithviraj Chavan. At a recent “Idea Exchange” organised by this paper, the Congress’s election manager for Karnataka appeared appropriately chastened. He struggled singlehandedly to explain the Congress’s latest flop show in a crucial state.

The election may not have been won or lost by him — in all probability, it wasn’t. Yet it is the moment of the election strategist.

This prominence of the strategist may be a relatively new phenomenon in our country but it is not sudden. The story, as we know it, can be traced at least as far back as the glitzy Lok Sabha campaign in 2004. That was when Pramod Mahajan’s high-tech “war room” in the national capital became a talking point. There was talk of “carpetbombing” constituencies in the countryside with “national” leaders flown in from Delhi. “India Shining” was pitted against “Congress ka haath, aam aadmi ke saath” in which “aam aadmi” had just replaced “garib”. Media management, marketing strategy, professional constituency profiling and salesmanship were becoming an acceptable part of politicalspeak.

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