Jayalalithaa in jail: How does this change politics in Tamil Nadu

It has stretched for 18 long years. It has been tried in two states. And now, the long arm of the law has closed in on AIADMK supremo J Jayalalithaa. She has been convicted in the long-pending  disproportionate assets case, sentenced for four years and fined a staggering `100 crore. The special court in Bangalore also convicted Jayalalithaa’s close aide Sasikala Natarajan, her niece Illavarasi and her nephew and Jayalalithaa’s disowned foster son Sudhakaran. With the conviction, Amma, as her supporters call her, becomes the first chief minister to be convicted under the Prevention of Corruption Act. She may be out of the electoral reckoning for a good long time, though she has been known to roar back on many an occasion.  
How will this verdict change — if at all it does — the political landscape of Tamil Nadu? Her party, the AIADMK, will surely take a beating and this is a shot in the arm for rival political parties. But this does not mean that there will be a political vacuum in the state. It will take some deft footwork by both regional and national parties to cash in on last week’s conviction. However, none seem to have their house in order in the state. Though the DMK has moved past the sibling rivalry phase that at one point seemed to hobble the  party, it is yet to recover from the drubbing it received in the Lok Sabha elections. The BJP and the Congress are yet to find their feet in Dravidian politics. DMDK chief Vijayakanth will benefit to an extent but it remains to be seen if he can convert that advantage into seats in the assembly. The DMK stands to gain the most but it has many hurdles to overcome.
Finance minister O Panneerselvam who replaces Jayalalithaa as chief minister can be expected to continue Amma’s policies and, in all likelihood, take dictation from Poes Garden. In 2001, when she had to step down, it was O Panneerselvam again who was appointed Tamil Nadu chief minister. There is no second-rung leadership in the party, it is Amma all the way. In the short-run, this will help her, but it could weaken the party in the long-run. But the conviction sends out a clear message: No one is above the law, not even the Empress of Poes Garden who has in recent times seemed invincible.

A 'Modi Wave' and the Muslim vote could stop Jayalalithaa's Delhi dreams

In Tamil Nadu, religion has seldom been a poll issue. Caste-based issues, regional and linguistic hegemony (the anti-Hindi agitations), the Lankan Tamil issue, water-sharing disputes (be it the Cauvery River problem with Karnataka or the Mullaiperiyar Dam row with Kerala), have dominated the Tamil Nadu political-scape for decades now. Another reason is the dominance of Dravidian parties, which in principle aim for social reforms through ending religious beliefs.
However, in this election things have changed with the BJP forming a five-party alliance in the state. Though in the past the BJP has contested from various seats in Tamil Nadu, it is for the first time that the national party has headed an alliance in the state. The NDA along with the Congress and AAP — both the parties are fighting the election alone in the state — has made the contest multi-cornered in many of the 39 seats in Tamil Nadu.

J Jayalalithaa with Narendra Modi (File photo)

The telling presence of the BJP in the state has made religion an important poll issue. The NDA has given the BJP a presence in the state like never before. There is a palpable ‘Modi Wave’ in the state. It is not clear if this ‘wave’ will help the BJP win a number of seats but it is likely to adversely affect the AIADMK in mainly two ways. First, traditionally, the upper caste Hindu votes have gone to the AIADMK. With the BJP in the poll scene, these votes are likely to split.
Second, it is likely that many of the voters apprehensive of the BJP and its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi have voted against the AIADMK, fearing that the party will support the BJP at the Centre in a post-poll alliance.
A BJP campaign, led by Modi, has brought into focus the Muslim community. There are about 4.5 million Muslims in the state or 6% of the state population. In an election where the margins are slender, 6% cannot be ignored. This has seen many regional parties wooing the community.
However, the disillusionment among the Muslims, especially the youth, with many regional parties is an important issue. “The bulk of Muslims have been with the DMK since the 1960s. But, the younger lot of Muslims are increasingly moving towards the Tamil Nadu Muslim Munnetra Kazagham and Tamil Nadu Tauheed Jamaat,” says S Anwar, a film-maker who has documented the history of ‘Muslims of Madras from 1600 to 2000 CE’ for the Madras Gazetteer Project. The inability to win the confidence of this section will prove crucial for the parties.

KM Khader Mohideen, president of the Tamil Nadu State
Indian Union Muslim League with DMK chief M Karunanidhi
(File photo by The Hindu)

The Muslims are unlikely to turn towards the Congress because of an anti-incumbency wave and it does not have a commanding presence in the state. AAP would like to believe its stand against corruption and the fact that a sizeable number of its 434 candidates all over India are Muslims may act in its favour. But AAP has failed to create a buzz in Tamil Nadu.
In such a scenario, it is the DMK, AIADMK’s arch-rival, which will benefit. The corruption charges against some of its leaders and the Alagiri-Stalin sibling rivalry is not likely to have an impact. Also, its vote base remains largely intact.
Though the AIADMK was leading in opinion polls initially, towards the final days before polling, the DMK witnessed a surge in its favour. A similar pattern was witnessed in 2009 — the AIADMK was expected to win a large number of seats but the DMK alliance surprised pollsters by winning 27 seats. In 16 days it will be clear how much of an impact the BJP-led alliance has made in Tamil Nadu. It will be clear how the Muslims has responded to the ‘Modi Wave’, and, most importantly, how these developments have affected J Jayalalithaa’s ambitions of playing a crucial role in government formation at the Centre.
(This appeared in the Hindustan Times on April 30, 2014)

Is there a NaMo wave south of the Vindhyas?

Till now the BJP has not been able to make considerable gains south of the Vindhyas, except in Karnataka. In 2009, from the four southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, which together have 129 Lok Sabha seats, the BJP won only 19 seats, all from Karnataka. The BJP-led NDA marked its presence in 1999 in other southern states through regional parties like the DMK in Tamil Nadu and the TDP in Andhra Pradesh. The South has been a blind spot for the party for quite some time but this time round, the BJP is focusing extensively on these states and hopes to do much better. BJP president Rajnath Singh has said that the party’s performance in Tamil Nadu will surprise poll pundits and some senior leaders even claim that the BJP will win 50 seats from the South alone. Many top BJP leaders, including its prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, and senior leaders like LK Advani have toured the South to boost the party’s electoral prospects.

In Karnataka, the return of BS Yeddyurappa and B Sriramulu to the BJP fold is a shot in the arm for the party, which lost the 2013 assembly election to the Congress. The BJP hopes to win more than half of the 28 Lok Sabha seats in the state. In Tamil Nadu, where the BJP has got into an alliance with five regional parties, the saffron party might upset the poll equation. The AIADMK, with which, it is likely to enter into a post-poll alliance, is expected to win a majority of the 39 seats in the state. However, the BJP may eat into the AIADMK’s upper caste vote share and this will help the DMK. In Kerala, the BJP has an outside chance of winning in Thiruvananthapuram and Kasargod. In Andhra Pradesh, the BJP has pinned its hopes on N Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP. There is anger against the Congress for its mishandling of the bifurcation of the state and that might help the BJP-TDP alliance.
The BJP has big expectations from these four states. There is a ‘Modi Wave’ in the South, where many people are aware of the Gujarat chief minister and his development agenda. This might increase the BJP’s vote share but it is to be seen if this will result in an increase in the number of seats the party will win. However, for a party that has not seen an active presence in the South, this is in itself an achievement.

NDA in TN: Captain to give Modi the Dravidian push

L to R: Vaiko, Vijayakanth, Rajnath Singh, Anbumani Ramadoss

Creating a “new political history” in Tamil Nadu as BJP president Rajnath Singh put it last Thursday while unveiling a new NDA coalition might be to overstate the case. But nevertheless, it is a significant achievement for the saffron party. Unable to reach a pre-poll alliance with its erstwhile ally, the AIADMK — notwithstanding the bonhomie between chief minister J Jayalalithaa and the BJP’s PM candidate, Narendra Modi — the BJP has brought together five regional parties on the same platform. What the BJP has achieved through this coalition is unique and commendable. It is unique because for more than four decades Tamil Nadu has seen bipolar politics between the main two Dravidian parties — the DMK and the AIADMK. Other parties, including the Congress, have been relegated to the margins. The NDA alliance in Tamil Nadu — including Vijayakanth’s DMDK, Vaiko’s MDMK and Ramadoss’ PMK — has the potential to challenge this two-party dominance. This is commendable because the BJP has virtually no presence in the state. In 2009, the BJP did not get a single one of the 39 seats and today it is spearheading the third political option in the state. Compare this to the Congress, which in 2009 won eight seats while in an alliance with the DMK, but today finds itself alone with no alliance partner.
That said, the BJP’s alliance comes with many built-in limitations. In the event of the BJP requiring the support of either the AIADMK or the DMK to form a government at the Centre and given the bitter differences among  the regional parties, it is to be seen how a Vijayakanth-led DMDK and a Jayalalithaa-led AIADMK can be accommodated on the same side. A contradiction in this coalition is the coming together of the DMDK and the PMK as both parties have been at loggerheads. The absence of PMK founder S Ramadoss from Thursday’s function has also created a lot of speculation. But, to quote Otto von Bismarck, “Politics is the art of the possible…” and in the past we have seen unexpected twists and turns during government formations.
A lot can happen between now and April 24 when the state goes to polls and even after the results are announced on May 16.  Nevertheless, it would be safe to say that the BJP has made the right moves by extending its alliance in the South and thereby getting closer to its target ‘Mission 272+’. These developments, if nothing else, will impart the colour and dynamism that will make elections in the state all the more interesting.

DMK: An arena for political fratricide

The good ol' days: MK Alagiri (left),
M Karunanidhi (seated) and MK Stalin

With the call for clean politics getting louder with every passing day, one would expect political parties to tailor their decisions keeping this in mind. However, the DMK, under the leadership of its president M Karunanidhi and MK Stalin, has chosen to ignore such signals. The party released a list of 35 candidates it wishes to field in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry, and its decision to field A Raja and Dayanidhi Maran, both former telecom ministers under the scanner for their alleged role in the telecom scams, shows that the DMK is not in tune with the public mood in the country. At a time when the people, especially the youth, are demanding accountability and transparency from political parties and when the judiciary is taking steps to keep tainted politicians away from fray, the move to field Mr Raja and Mr Maran could backfire on the party. On expected lines, MK Alagiri, Mr Stalin’s elder brother who was earlier suspended from the party on disciplinary grounds, was not given a ticket.
Of the many inferences that can be derived from the DMK’s list of candidates, the most evident is Mr Stalin’s stamp of authority on the selection. The majority of the candidates are Stalin loyalists, while Alagiri loyalists, like former minister D Napoleon, have been denied a ticket. Mr Stalin has closed the door on his brother’s chances of returning to the party and contesting the polls by announcing the candidature of V Velusamy, a Stalin loyalist, from the Madurai constituency — Mr Alagiri is the sitting MP for Madurai. Caught in infighting, the party seems oblivious of the changing reality in Tamil Nadu. The ruling Jayalalithaa-led AIADMK is showing no signs of fatigue and Vijayakanth’s DMDK is gaining momentum, especially after its alliance with the BJP. Rather than focusing on important issues the DMK is washing its dirty linen in public.

In the recent past: Dayanidhi Maran (left)
and A Raja (right) with Alagiri

Whatever be the verdict on May 16, one thing is clear: The DMK, today, is a far cry from a party that was founded on  social goals. The Dravidar Kazhagam (DK), born out of the Neethi Katchi in 1944, was the DMK’s parent organisation formed to protect the interests of the Dravidian people. It aimed at social reform and ending upper-caste dominance. The DMK, which was formed in 1949 because of personal differences between its founder CN Annadurai and DK leader Periyar EV Ramaswamy Naicker, continued the DK’s mission of safeguarding the rights of the people of Tamil Nadu. It is unfortunate that what started as a social revolution and later metamorphosed into a political movement is today reduced to an arena for political fratricide.

Pre-poll alliance: BJP and Congress should go it alone

Narendra Modi (left) and Rahul Gandhi

The experience has not been encouraging. Coalition governments that have been around since the 1990s have not really brought the representative democracy or stability that people had hoped for. The Congress’ waning presence in different states and the BJP failing to become a pan-India party have given regional parties more political space in New Delhi. Pulled in opposite directions by coalition partners, the principal party — either the Congress or the BJP — has not been able to live up to the expectations of the people. In this scenario, it would be prudent for the two national parties to not enter into pre-poll alliances with regional parties and rather contest the maximum number of seats in the coming Lok Sabha elections.

Ram Vilas Paswan with his son

In that vein, it is not good news that the BJP might strike an alliance with the TDP in Andhra Pradesh, much against the will of the local party unit. Pre-poll alliances with regional heavyweights are safer bets for the national parties. But by doing so they are reducing their chances of reaching the half-way mark of 272 seats on their own. They are also opening the field for regional parties to have a greater clout at the Centre in a coalition government. This clout or bargaining power often works against the stability of a government. A sign of this is seen in KT Rama Rao’s statement that his party, the TRS, was under “no compulsion to either merge or ink a pre-poll pact with the Congress” and LJP leader Ram Vilas Paswan aligning with the BJP but keeping his ‘options open’. Regional parties seldom view issues through the prism of national importance, as was seen when TMC leader Mamata Banerjee scuttled the Teesta water-sharing agreement and when the DMK walked out of the UPA over the Lankan Tamil issue.

KT Rama Rao

If there is one lesson that can be learnt from the UPA 1 and UPA 2 governments, it is that the greater the presence of regional parties in a coalition at the Centre, the greater the chances of a gridlocked, dysfunctional government. Thus for increasing the chances of a stable government at the Centre, it is important that the national parties go it alone at the hustings. If the national parties fail to learn from past mistakes the 16th Lok Sabha will also succumb to ‘coalition compulsions’ and have an amorphous existence.