After the long wait, Shivakumar gets to govern

Karnataka has had chief ministers who arrived early and chief ministers who arrived by accident. D.K. Shivakumar arrived late, and on the strength of his own record.

He was sworn in at Lok Bhavan in Bengaluru on 3 June, with Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot administering the oath of office and secrecy. Shivakumar, 64, took the oath holding a copy of the Constitution and in the name of the seer Gangadhar Ajja. Thirteen ministers took oath alongside him. The ceremony ended a leadership question that had preoccupied the Congress in Karnataka for the better part of a year.

Little about his rise has been sudden. He has represented Kanakapura in the Assembly since 2008 and Sathanur from 1989, and has been president of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee since July 2020. The party job in particular is one most senior leaders decline. It involves district committees, local body candidates, and long drives to places where nobody is filming. He held it through an election cycle and a government, and it shows in the discipline of the Congress organisation in the state.

His years as Deputy Chief Minister were spent on the least rewarding files in the government. He held Water Resources along with Bengaluru City Development, which put BBMP, BDA, BWSSB, BMRDA and the metro corporation on one desk. Anyone who has watched Bengaluru’s monsoon knows what that means in practice. He made a habit of turning up in ordinary wards to hear complaints in person, taking questions on encroached lake land at Mallathahalli, on the shortage of BMTC feeder buses for last-mile metro connectivity, and on roads repeatedly dug up for utility work. Ministers who conduct grievance meetings in a public park, without a script, tend to learn things that files do not carry.

The first Cabinet meeting set the tone for the new government. It cleared a six-point welfare and development package: free bus passes for students across the state, a state-run employment exchange, ten thousand youth clubs, and fresh investment in urban infrastructure. Shivakumar described it as the start of a “Youth Era” for Karnataka. These are unglamorous commitments, and they address the two things that decide a young household’s prospects in this state, which are transport and a first job.

He has been equally serious about the longer horizon. Inaugurating Google I/O Connect India in Bengaluru on 14 July, he announced that Karnataka will set up the country’s first government-driven Artificial Intelligence University, together with an AI Hub to incubate research by startups and firms. The plan extends to AI curricula in primary schools, generative AI in citizen services, and green data centres in Bengaluru and Mangaluru. He pointed out that the state already accounts for close to 40 per cent of India’s software exports and hosts more than 17,000 startups. The claim was made from a position of some strength.

On the ground, the work has moved. In his first month he opened the 2.2-km Hebbal to Mekhri Circle tunnel and the 10.7-km S.M. Krishna Corridor, and met the Prime Minister and Union ministers including Amit Shah and Nirmala Sitharaman on irrigation projects, the Bengaluru Metro and the RRTS. Karnataka has not always benefited from chief ministers willing to sit across the table in Delhi.

The immediate test is water. With the state facing a severe drought, he has called Karnataka’s MPs to Delhi to press for central assistance and has convened the Monsoon Session of the legislature from 13 August. He has spent thirty-seven years preparing for weeks like this one.