Tamil Nadu battle royale

Not since the time of matinee idol MG Ramachandran has a Tamil Nadu leader ruled the hearts of the emotionally charged Tamil masses as J Jayalalithaa has.

Though anti-incumbency has brought her down a few notches from the high pedestal on which she was perched, there is no mistaking the fact that Jayalalithaa is poised to win the Assembly elections. What has soured the pitch partially for her is the mismanagement of the flash floods in the state that wreaked havoc in Chennai, and her continuing arrogance.

Recent opinion polls have only differed on the scale of Jayalalithaa’s victory. That the party she heads, the AIADMK, would emerge victorious in the battle of the ballot is indeed a foregone conclusion but there is general expectation that the DMK would this time put up a much better show than in 2011.

The rival DMK whose supremo M Karunanidhi and she share a pathological hatred for each other has gained some ground since his party was mauled in 2011 and then in the parliamentary elections in 2014. But her charisma is too deep to be fully neutralised just yet.

Jayalalithaa is cashing in on the state’s welfare initiatives under Brand Amma — from Amma canteens, Amma mineral water and Amma salt to Amma pharmacies. Even her critics admit, albeit grudgingly, that these welfare measures have been well-handled and with the iron grip that she has over the administration, Jayalalithaa, or Amma as she is to the masses, has ensured that corruption in the management of it is minimal.

The teeming millions in Tamil Nadu are conscious of the fact that in the rest of the country a big chunk of money, supposedly intended for the poor and the under-privileged, ends up lining the pockets of politicians, middlemen and babus. That while corruption is rampant in other areas of activity in Tamil Nadu, the welfare measures for the masses are largely free of this terrible menace is a huge relief to the poor and a major trump-card for her in wooing these vote banks.

In all fairness to her, Jayalalithaa’s record in growth and investment has also been fairly impressive. The restoration of 24-hour power supply to the state’s industries in July 2015, and the fact that the Jayalalithaa government garnered promises of a whopping Rs2.42 lakh crore of investment at the 2015 Tamil Nadu’s Global Investors’ Meet have gone down well with industry and trade. The farm sector has been effectively wooed by the four per cent VAT exemption on farm equipment and the allotment of nearly Rs6,500 crore towards agriculture in the state budget. There is a certain vibrancy in the economy that is being well liked by prospective investors.

On the debit side, Jayalalithaa’s arrogance and imperiousness and the fact that even central leaders find it difficult to get an appointment with her have not endeared her to politicians and bureaucrats. In a recent video that has gone viral on social media, Union minister Piyush Goyal was scathing in his attack on Jayalalithaa. In his speech on “Making India a Global Economic Superpower” at the Conference on Young Indians in New Delhi last month, Goyal said of Tamil Nadu: “It’s a state within a state.” He added, “It’s a part of the country where I can’t even reach out to the chief minister. I have made several attempts to talk to their leaders without success. I have access to 28 states in this country, but in the 29th state, even if I call up, when I talk to the power minister, he would hear me and he would say ‘Okay, I will talk to Amma’. Goyal went on: “In Parliament, they can’t even open their mouth, any of the members of that party [AIADMK], unless they have a script which has been sanitised or vetted in Chennai, and they read out from that.”

That apart, Prime Minister Narendra Modi continues to be keen on a formal alliance, or at least a tacit understanding with Jayalalithaa. Without that the BJP will be nowhere in Tamil Nadu.

The DMK is all set to retrieve some ground that it lost in 2011 and 2014, largely due to anti-incumbency. But many see no merit in Karunanidhi not passing on the mantle to his son Stalin. The young voters in particular want a change and feel that Stalin is ripe for directly challenging Jayalalithaa.

That there is another challenger in the race, also from the tinsel world, Vijay Kanth, has injected an element of drama in the stakes in Tamil Nadu. The sudden decision of Vijay Kanth not to go with Karunanidhi has queered the pitch somewhat for the DMK but DMK’s loss could well be Jayalalithaa’s gain insofar as it would have split the anti-Jayalalithaa vote. Vijay Kanth could well be a kingmaker in the event of a hung assembly but that eventuality seems only a remote possibility.

The Congress is not even a pale shadow of what it used to be once and if it manages to win a few seats it would only be because it is piggybacking on DMK. Independently, its clout has waned. That it rode on Janata Dal(U)-RJD’s back in Bihar, and is dependent on the CPM in West Bengal is evidence enough that it is too weak to make an impression without a prop.

All in all, it is Jayalalithaa versus Karunanidhi again in Tamil Nadu with Vijay Kanth a marginal force and no other party worth its salt to make an impact.

The author is a journalist based in Bengaluru