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| Edited By: |Source: DNA |Updated: Dec 07, 2016, 08:00 AM IST
Many, especially in North India, where the Chief Minister is at best a seat-grabbing power monger, have been wondering at the wave of sorrow engulfing Tamil Nadu and at why Jayalalithaa Jayaraman, starlet-turned-Chief Minister, against whom many a corruption charge was levied is so deeply mourned.
As her bitter political rivals the DMK, and full props to M Karunanidhi for grace, put it, “brave warrior.... our Thalaipathy has to search for a worthy opponent now”. Many a eulogy has been written for her, but the grief is for a legacy of leadership.
Chief Ministers come and go, but Tamil Nadu’s pantheon focused on welfare and reform.
From pre-Independence rulers like Ramarayaningar, the Raja of Panagal, who introduced the Hindu Religious Endowments Bill, and the Madras University Act, 1923, to ‘Periyar’, who pulled the Justice Party from a political party to a social one that would fight caste, and push women’s rights.
Post Independence came the erudite ‘Rajaji’, whose voice still resonates in popular culture in the preface to MS Subbulaxmi’s Bhaja Govindam. Founder of the Swatantra Party, and a first recipient of the Bharat Ratna. Rajaji, initially against linguistic states, gave in when Potti Sriramulu fasted himself unto death. Despte being an architect of linguistic India, he ratified anti Hindi demonstrations and made English the state language.
The state has always had leaders who made their social stances their electoral pulpits. They have been equally unafraid to step down. K Kamraj, who pushed Lal Bahadur Shastri to take on Prime Ministership, is father of India’s Mid-Day Meal scheme – Tamil Nadu still has the best indices– and he ensured no child had to walk more than 3kms to school. He focused on dams, irrigation and heavy industry investment. In a move that no Indian National Congress leader could replicate today, he resigned from his post to rejuvenate the party asking senior leaders to follow suit. Six did.
After Bhaktavatsalam came Annadurai, MG Ramachandran, before Jayalalitha took over in 1991, fresh off the loss of her mentor, and a turbulent period. Her ‘freebie culture’ saw ‘Amma’ appliances in every home, scholarships, gold for brides, and maternity leave, social benefits flung like treasure out of the TASMAC pot at rainbow’s end.
Swaminathan Aiyar called it ‘the alcoholic mammaries of the welfare state’, but with basics taken care of, the state focussed on tangibles, like investment and crime. Welfare, a tool of state governance, was made an electoral model by Karunanidhi and usurped by Jayalalitha.
What is interred with Jayalalitha is this legacy—where the people came first, through all the corruption, paranoia, and megalomania, people still came first.
