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Even at the end of the Emergency, while most of India was awash with anti-Congress sentiments, Karnataka went with the Congress. Indira Gandhi, who was defeated in the 1977 general elections, was re-elected to the Lok Sabha from Chikmagalur constituency in Karnataka in 1978. One of the reasons for the Congress’ strength in Karnataka was Chief Minister Devraj Urs's policies which addressed the concerns of the historically downtrodden communities. Under Urs’ government of 1972-78, the combined strength of OBCs, Dalits, and Muslims overtook the combined strength of the upper castes and dominant castes for the first time in the legislative history of Karnataka. In some parts of the state, especially in the coastal districts, land reforms were implemented successfully, breaking the hold of upper castes and dominant castes. An effective reservation policy for OBCs was also implemented. These measures resulted in relative empowerment and upward mobility of sections of OBCs, Dalits and Muslims.

The pride of the Vijayanagara empire and the supposed destructive Muslim conquest of Karnataka became an oft-repeated leitmotif of many Kannada novels of the time. The 1916 novel Kannadigara Karma Kathe (“The Fatal Story of Kannadigas”) by Galaganatha was typical of the genre. It described the fall of the Hindu Kannadiga empire of Vijayanagara at the hands of the Muslim Bahamani sultanate. The work's inspiration was the Marathi novel Vajaraghat, by Hari Narayan Apte, which describes the betrayal of Shivaji by Mughals.

The pandemic became the policy window for reactivating the hitherto stalled agenda of implementing rate regulations in private hospitals. Growing complaints by the people and the demands raised by civil society groups resulted in the emergence of a political will to impose Covid-specific regulations on private hospitals. However, state regulatory measures faltered in implementation and could not act as an effective deterrent against excessive charging by most private hospitals. The effectiveness of regulatory measures seemed to be severely impeded by issues where the three actors—the state, private hospitals, and patients—intersected. One, there was the background of rampant commercialisation of the private sector, a lack of transparency and not using standard formats for billing. Two, there was the pre-existing lack of a larger regulatory mechanism over the private sector. Instead, there was only the practice of declaring impromptu regulation using the weak legal instrument of the Disaster Management Act. Three, the states did not have the regulatory capacity to monitor the implementation of regulations, and gaps in the rate packages provided hospitals with an opportunity to issue high bills. Four, the knowledge asymmetry between doctors and patients led to medical expertise-based financial exploitation of patients.

The Congress’ political hara-kiri in Karnataka also gave the BJP and Hindutva opportunities to multiply their influence. In 1989, the Lingayat leader Veerendra Patil was unceremoniously removed as chief minister by the Congress under Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. The drifting away of Lingayat community from the party was complete. The BJP also gained from the splitting up of the Janata Dal in 1999. The JD (Secular), under H.D. Deve Gowda, identified with the Vokkaliga community, which had historical animosity and political competition with the Lingayats. The JDS was not an option for the Lingayats. This opportunity was seized on by the BJP, which crowned the Lingayat leader B.S. Yediyurappa as their party chief. The RSS also started working with several Lingayat seers on the agenda of Hindu unity. These developments further consolidated the Lingayat support to the BJP. By the 2004 elections, the Lingayat base of the erstwhile Janata Party was usurped by the BJP.

The 1990s in Karnataka were the beginning of the neo-liberal economic regime introduced by the Congress. The privatisation and corporatisation of the economy resulted in not only the collapse of livelihoods but also of an organised labour class, made up of OBC castes across Hindus and Muslims. The survival anxieties of OBC Hindus were channelised against Muslims, a section of whom could achieve relative social mobility by migrating to the Gulf states. Routine bargaining between the fishers of the Hindu Mogaveera castes and Muslim traders were blown out of proportion to consolidate the youth under Hindutva organisations. Coastal Karnataka (once a bastion of left politics) and the Malnad region soon became strongholds for the RSS and the BJP. The RSS also provided a social base and security to the emerging education, commerce, and real estate businesses.

In the late 1980s though, as the Ram Janmabhoomi movement gathered momentum, the Sangh Parivar engineering several communal riots. These riots occurred across south, central and northwest Karnataka, in cities and towns facing a sharp economic decline. They included Davanagere in central Karnataka, which was once considered the Manchester of Karnataka (for its  thriving cotton mills) and the Moscow of Karnataka for the political orientation of  its working classes. In southern Karnataka, the Sangh Parivar was successful in instigating a dispute around the syncretic Bababudan Dargah shrine, where Hindus and Muslims alike offered prayers. From the late 1980s, the Sangh Parivar and its organisations began to push for Hindu rituals at the site. This slowly turned into a movement to take over the shrine through claims it was a temple forcibly converted to a dargah by Tipu Sultan. The issue soon began to be portrayed as the 'Ayodhya of the South’. The opportunistic and soft Hindutva politics of the Congress and other centrist parties in nurturing this issue is important in understanding the linear growth of the Sangh Parivar in the state post the 1990s.

Beginning with the much celebrated Vachana movement in the 12th century, the Sufi-Bhakti challenge to Vedic spiritual regime, the brief structural changes brought in by Tipu Sultan, to the modern day vibrant peoples’ movement that set the egalitarian agenda in the public discourse during the 70s and 80s, Karnataka has had several progressive moments. But as Ambedkar puts it succinctly, even though there were many revolutionary upsurges  in  history,  ruling regimes were successful in hatching a counter revolution. In Karnataka, the ruling feudal order and its Brahmanical ideology have been successful in co-opting and taming counter currents, making egalitarian ideals mere show pieces. Hindutva forces have adopted different strategies for different societies to cultivate their ideal Hindu Brahmanical samaj.