Among his largely pastoral Vokkaliga community in South Karnataka, S M Krishna, who passed away early Tuesday at the age of 92, was once known as ‘Texas Gowda’.
It was as much his higher education in the US — law degrees from Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, and George Washington University in Washington in the 1950s, his Fulbright scholarship — as his suave, urbane ways that set Krishna apart, though he would go on to hold the highest position in Karnataka as Chief Minister, and serve as the Union External Affairs Minister in the twilight of his political career.
Belonging to an affluent family, Krishna got into politics in 1962, almost as soon as he got back from the US. Success came early, with Krishna winning as an Independent in the Assembly elections from his hometown of Maddur in the Vokkaliga heartland district of Mandya. Later, he joined the Praja Socialist Party, an anti-Congress outfit, which reconciled with the Congress in 1968.
He went on to win from the Mandya Lok Sabha seat thrice, in 1968, 1971 and 1980.
But it was when he took over as the CM of Karnataka in 1992, holding the post till 2004, that Krishna’s golden period began. He was widely credited with putting the city of Bengaluru on the global map. The image of poster boy of the nascent Information Technology industry at the turn of the century fit Krishna well, with the Congress leader seeing through several infrastructure projects to meet his oft-stated goal “to convert Bangalore into Singapore”. One of the drivers of this was his Bangalore Agenda Task Force.
Family members of S M Krishna at his residence in Bengaluru on Tuesday. (Express Photo)
One of the first CMs to extensively use public and media relations, Krishna also courted the image of this new-age leader, building close ties with the elite in Bengaluru. At the same time, he was known as an able administrator who commanded the respect of the bureaucracy and his ministers.
On Tuesday, as condolences poured in, most of them dwelled on this part of Krishna’s political journey. “It was during his tenure as CM that Bengaluru came to be known as the ‘Silicon Valley of India’,” current Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah recalled, while adding that Krishna’s dream of making Bengaluru Singapore was yet to be realised.
Karnataka’s then Urban Development Minister D K Shivakumar – who is now Deputy CM – and Krishna’s businessman son-in-law V G Siddhartha (who died in 2019), were power players who profited in a big way during Krishna’s tenure largely through smart land deals.
Eventually though, it was this excessive focus on Bangalore that cost Krishna, with rural votes turning against him in Karnataka. In 2004, he called early elections, thinking he had done enough to win the state again, but the Congress suffered a blow.
That wasn’t the only setback for Krishna for, beginning in the 1990s, he had also started losing his Mandya turf to rising Vokkaliga leader H D Deve Gowda. Krishna would never recover that ground.
In his biography of Deve Gowda titled Furrows in a Field, journalist and author Sugata Srinivasaraju writes that the JD(S) leader and many others contributed to the growth of the IT industry, and “it is a travesty that S M Krishna… became the poster boy of the IT industry in the media”. He writes, Krishna “pulled off a successful public relations trick by engaging the IT elite in Bengaluru and also endeavoured to make them the city’s quasi bureaucracy”.
The Bangalore Agenda Task Force also came under a cloud later, with allegations that it privileged elite interests.
After he lost as CM in 2004, the UPA government at the Centre made Krishna the Governor of Maharashtra. In a surprise decision in 2009, he was moved from his gubernatorial role to the position of External Affairs Minister.
However, in 2011, Krishna committed a faux pas on the global stage, reading out the wrong speech at the UN, strengthening his detractors’ claims that age had started showing for the 79-year-old. He soon found himself out of the MEA. By then, there was also talk of the global spread of his son-in-law’s business interests.
In 2017, Krishna sprang another surprise, ending a nearly five-decade association with the Congress to join the BJP, in what was seen as an effort to shield his son-in-law, who had come under the radar of the Income Tax and Enforcement Directorate under the Narendra Modi-led BJP government at the Centre.
However, if the BJP hoped Krishna would help it find a footing in southern Karnataka, that never materialised. Now, the BJP, ironically, is riding on the shoulders of the Deve Gowda-led JD(S) there.
Security personnel keep vigil as people arrive to pay tribute to S M Krishna at his residence in Bengaluru. (Photo: PTI)
Last year, Krishna announced his retirement from active politics. “I got to know of discussions about me not being seen much (publicly). We all should be aware of our age. At the age of 90, we cannot act as though we are in our 50s. Respecting that age factor, I’m gradually stepping aside from public life,” he said.
Krishna’s lasting legacy will be being among the last politicians of a certain kind in Karnataka, a charmer with both genders, who could often be found on a tennis court. He made it a ritual to travel for Wimbledon every year, and was a lifetime president of the Karnataka State Lawn Tennis Association
The flip side, for many, is the other part of his legacy, being a father figure to Shivakumar, and the kind of politics the Congress Vokkaliga strongman, among Karnataka’s wealthiest leaders, represents. In his condolence message Tuesday, an emotional Shivakumar said: “S M Krishna was like my father. His guidance and advice are evident in my life. He is the architect of the new Karnataka.”
Incidentally, as condolences poured in from the leadership of his old party (the Congress) and new (the BJP), Deve Gowda perhaps captured this dichotomy the best in his message Tuesday. “I am saddened by the passing away of Shri. S M Krishna, my friend and longtime Karnataka colleague… We started out in politics around the same time, and cultivated very different approaches to development and governance,” Deve Gowda, 91, said.