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India's most despised politician

Vinaash-kaale vipreet buddhi!" Jayaprakash Narayan sighed as Indira Gandhi's minions dragged him to jail. But Indira Gandhi possessed the capacity to learn from errors. She spent the wilderness years of 1977 to 1980 getting back in touch with the electorate, all those millions who had been alienated by the arrogant excess of the Emergency. So much so that she even sought the blessings of the same JP whom she had imprisoned.

I do not in any way wish to compare Indira Gandhi with J Jayalalitha; the late prime minister was incomparably greater. But it is a measure of a person's maturity that he or she is willing to learn from the example of others. Given a second chance to rule India, Indira Gandhi went out of her way to prove that she wasn't the same arrogant person she had been. I am not saying she didn't make mistakes, just that she didn't repeat earlier errors.

Compare that with Jayalalitha. She made herself thoroughly unpopular with the AIADMK in the years when she was M G Ramachandran's propaganda secretary. The price of that arrogance was paid when the AIADMK founder died; the party swung to his wife, Janaki Ramachandran, rather than make Jayalalitha his heir. Their dislike came into the open as AIADMK workers pushed her off the gun-carriage carrying MGR's body.

Paradoxically, this helped. Sympathy replaced the earlier disgust evoked by her arrogance. But Jayalalitha had learned nothing; as Tamil Nadu chief minister, she delighted in humiliating her own partymen. The lavish, almost obscene, display of wealth at the wedding of her foster-son proved to be the last straw. And the DMK-TMC combine swept her out in 1996.

But Karunanidhi unwittingly came to her rescue. He jailed her, an act that moved the voters. That, and the Coimbatore blasts, led to an amazing reversal of fortune for Jayalalitha. After the general election of 1998, I recall writing that Jayalalitha and Sharad Pawar were amongst the undisputed winners. You can't blame Pawar for being pushed to the sideline; he lacks the magic surname! But Jayalalitha?

Hasn't she learned anything even now? After losing power, she advertised (literally) her distancing from her foster-son and his aunt Sasikala. But now Sasikala at any rate is back in favour. And so are the haughty temper-tantrums. And so is her insistence on making partymen dance to her whimsies, leading ultimately to a party of non-entities.

I remember watching the news recently. S Muthiah of the AIADMK was being interviewed on camera. The session went something like this.

"Sir, are you withdrawing support from the Vajpayee ministry?"

Muthiah (with a cheesy smile): "Our leader will decide."

"Sir, are you exploring the possibilities of an alternative government with other parties?"

Muthiah (no change of expression): "Our leader will decide."

"Sir, can you give us some idea of your future course of action?"

Muthiah (face frozen in a grin): "Our leader will decide."

At this point, the assembled reporters despaired of talking to a parrot, and let the AIADMK representative drive away. Muthiah is supposedly one of the senior leaders of the party, a man who has served in the Union Cabinet, a man who heads the AIADMK in the Lok Sabha. No wonder Jayalalitha is openly contemptuous of her partymen. Can you respect a puppet who can't think for himself?

But it is dangerous to let oneself be surrounded by nobody but courtiers. They feed your fantasies and make you lose all sense of perspective -- precisely what has happened to Jayalalitha. She sees herself as a serious candidate to replace Atal Bihari Vajpayee. She insists on staying in the same hotel suite that the prince of Wales and the US first lady used when they visited Delhi. She insists her partymen remove their footwear before seeing her as though they were visiting a temple...

What is the result? Every party -- not just the BJP, but the Communists, the TMC, and even the Congress -- is trying to avoid Jayalalitha's company. Whether or not the Vajpayee ministry survives, whether or not there is another general election, one thing is clear: Jayalalitha is India's most despised politician.

The only one willingly seen with her is Subramanian Swamy, but that is a bad portent. Everyone who accepted his advice has suffered -- ask Chandra Shekhar who made him the Union law minister, or P V Narasimha Rao who gave him the status of a Cabinet minister. We can, I think, suitably update the ancient adage, and say: "Vinaash-kaale Subramanian Swamy buddhi!"

T V R Shenoy