D K Shivakumar has finally reached where he had aspired to. He has become the chief minister of Karnataka with little or no ideological baggage, but with loads of loyalty points. He has also had the unique privilege to define, in the last quarter century since S M Krishna became chief minister of the state in 1999, what his “loyalty” meant to the Congress system.

It is important to remember that DK grew within the Congress system when the party had accepted the diminishing of its dominance in Indian politics. It is possible to argue that his career was made between two AICC sessions, one in Pachmarhi in 1998, where the party was still speaking of “revival and renewal” as a singular force, and the 2003 Shimla session, where there was a larger embrace of coalition politics, which foresaw troubles and necessitated troubleshooters.

In 1999, the Congress had seen big exits on Sonia Gandhi’s foreign-origin issue, and the party had slipped into a palpable crisis. Around that time, a resource-rich state like Karnataka, under S M Krishna, became extremely useful for the party to keep its confidence till the 2004 moment arrived. DK, as Krishna’s daring and dashing points man, became something of a link between the Krishna government and the Congress high command. It is then that he assiduously built his network, sustained it over the years, and also made hyperbolic claims about his capacity and capital. This, till he learnt to play the power game with a combination of nimbleness and knavishness in more recent years.

DK’s brand of politics constantly created an image problem for him in a landscape where progressive labels, like the one his........

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