Vajpayee gave Jaya greater credibility
N Sathiya Moorthy in Madras
Deliver, or be damned. That's the loud message that the 'silent
majority' of Tamil Nadu has delivered their political masters
for the third time in a row.
The 'upset' sweep of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance in the just-concluded Lok Sabha poll from the state owes it primarily to the voter's ever-growing expectations, and his impatience with the ruling establishment. There are other reasons, too.
The 'strategic alliance' that AIADMK supremo J Jayalalitha brought together with the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Pattali Makkal Katchi provided the much-needed base for a much-maligned leader of a much-demoralised party.
If the MDMK in southern Tamil Nadu, and the PMK in the northern parts provided the additional strength she required to offset the vote-loss of 1996, the BJP gave greater credibility and acceptability to a wider audience.
AIADMK insiders now concede that Jayalalitha was in a great hurry to conclude the tie-up with the BJP after learning that her own acceptability in the state had gone down, even from the low 22 per cent rating that the party had got in its worst-ever election of 1996.
Against this, the BJP and Vajpayee's prime ministerial
nomination got a high 30 per cent rating, particularly in the
volatile middle-class segment that was getting increasingly tired
of the 'United Front experiment', and the ineptitude of the Dravida Munnetra Kazagham-Tamil Maanila Congress partners to stem the rot.
With such an alliance, Jayalalitha did succeed in widening her
vote-base and also in diverting the voter focus from herself to
the BJP and Vajpayee with a positive public image. Even when she deviated from this line, and started focussing her campaign on herself -- asking the voter as to what wrong she had committed as chief minister -- she was quick to realise the mistake. She went back to selling Vajpayee, and through him the AIADMK, to the Tamil voter.
What, however, seems to have clinched the deal was the voter's increasing impatience for quick and fast results. Here, the ruling DMK seems to have failed. The DMK, in particular, launched what was mostly a negative campaign, keeping the electoral politics Jayalalitha-centric, even two years after she had been voted out.
They also had a negative campaign against the BJP after the 'Coimbatore blasts', in which their noise was shriller than that of the TMC with its traditional anti-BJP bias.
In all this, the DMK and the TMC seemed to have overlooked the voters's unsaid demand for results, flowing from the clear mandate of 1996. The steep hike in bus fares, milk prices and power tariff, the 'ration shop muddle' where supplies were irregular and prices higher, only made things that much difficult for the DMK, though 'populism' is the word of the game otherwise.
The DMK also faces the misfortune of the proverbially short public memory, forgetting that most roads were relaid after a first round of floods, only to be washed away by subsequent rains.
Nor did they have quick answers to the infrastructural deficiencies like badly-maintained buses and poorly-lit bylanes, all of which were inherited from the 'populist era' of the late M G Ramachandran and left untouched by Jayalalitha -- but ills for which the voter seemed to think that Karunanidhi, with his proven efficiency, had a ready-cure.
When Karunanidhi failed, the voter could not accept it.
But literacy and education, not to mention the voter's knowledge
of his democratic power, made the difference, and he expected
his masters to serve him first, before seeking to be his master,
in turn.
The Karunanidhi government started off well on the law and
order front, coming down heavily on goons. However, he could not do much about the 'political violence' of the 'Coimbatore blasts' variety. What is worse, the ruling party gave the
impression that it was 'indulgent' towards Islamic fundamentalists, only because the community was its solid vote bank.
If the cadre-level work among alliance partners was good in both
the camps, the TMC did not have many to offer to the DMK in the first place. But the purposeful involvement of the AIADMK alliance camp was missing in the DMK camp, where positive poll results seemed to have been taken for granted -- with disastrous consequences. The cadres even now complain about how the leadership did not take care of their interests during election time, with money and power resting in a few top-level leaders.
If some analysts would propound a caste-based vote-bank theory
this time, they are bound to go wrong. If anything, the AIADMK-BJP alliance can be said to have performed well, cutting across caste lines.
True, the Vanniars owe loyalty to the PMK, but this time it was
much more than the four per cent average of the past election.
And in the southern districts, enraged by the DMK's alleged involvement in the Tamil Nadu Mercantile Bank takeover row, the traditionally-Congress minded Nadar community voted with the rival Thevar community, to back the BJP-AIADMK alliance.
The Gounders in the once-traditional AIADMK vote bank in the western districts, too, have voted the party again after the 1996 gap. But that had more to do with the general resentment flowing from the 'Coimbatore blasts' in their region. And across the state, Harijans, with their own skirmishes with the Vanniars, Gounders and Thevars, too, have voted in substantial numbers for the winning combination.
If anything, that way there could be said to have been a wider
communal divide, even though it is too early to rush to such a
conclusion. True, the acceptance level of the BJP and Vajpayee
was high, but it is too early to say whether it flowed from the
Tamil voter's belated willingness to accept 'Hindutva', or his
need for a 'stable government' at the Centre, as his counterparts
elsewhere in the nation, too, felt.
But at least at land's end, Nagercoil, the TMC retained the
seat against the 'wave' and against most expectations, only because the non-Hindu votes count more in this BJP stronghold. And it is the only constituency where non-Hindus are in a majority.
There is a lesson in all this for Tamil Nadu political leaders. Both Karunanidhi and Moopanar were more concerned about the goings-on in distant Delhi than nearer home in their native state.
And this was for the first time that Karunanidhi ventured out of his home territory to play the political game at the national level, overcoming his hesitation of the past, flowing from the 'Kamaraj failure'.
Earlier attempts in this regard were all half-hearted ventures,
and involved only political alliances. Power at the Centre was
not his aim and purpose. This was a different experience, and
a different result it has produced.
Moopanar, too, has learnt how different it is to operate at the national-level as has been his wont while in the Congress, and how it should be while heading a regional party. His priorities were confused.
Even while speaking about restoring 'Kamaraj rule' in the state in the next assembly election, his eyes were set on the Delhi gaddi. That meant compromises of the type with the DMK and other United Front partners, which put him in an awkward situation.
If Moopanar had to accept the DMK with its electoral possibilities for the TMC despite increasing cadre-pressure, he would not accommodate new partners into the front, fearing that it would jeoparadise the TMC's national agenda -- which again was nuclear.
Add to this, his handling of the TMC affairs, particularly his lack of remedial measures to win back the traditional Nadar voters in the southern districts, particularly after the AIADMK had struck a formidable alliance. He also delayed his political and electoral decisions, be it the continuing the DMK alliance, or naming his party nominees -- and the recipe for disaster was complete.
Thus, both Karunanidhi and Moopanar, helping each other to climb higher, have pulled down each other at the same rate.
Conversely, the partners of the AIADMK alliance, while
seeming to pull down one another under their own weight, were
actually helping one another -- only that none was wiser to it
until after the event.
Elections '98
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