Back to basics

The government is back to earth after its ten days in the clouds as J. Jayalalitha, loath to be out of the public eye for long, gets back to work and it loses a third minister in two months. There is nothing quite like Jayalalitha, this coalition has to concede, to restore sobriety and a sense of proportion about its own standing at a time when things could easily go to its head. It is true that this time the lady has not precipitated immediate trouble for the government by apparently persuading her minister of state in North Block, R.K. Kumar, to resign for health reasons. As well as that, she is theoretically well within her rights to seek a replacement of one of her ministers by another. The point is that if her reasons had been above board they could have been named upfront instead of forcing poor Kumar to take refuge in a hospital and go through with this charade. What she has done with her latest move is to further expose just how anxious she is to save her skin in the myriad cases pending againsther.

For that reason, the government can hardly afford insouciance. The extent of Kumar’s cooperation with his remote control in Chennai was ventilated only a few weeks ago when mass transfers of income tax officials were ordered. Among them — surprise — were some involved in investigating cases against her. Kumar had to brazen it out by stoutly maintaining that the transfers were a routine "annual exercise" and "good for the system". And yet Jayalalitha refuses to be pleased. If even this degree of concern for her welfare failed to match up, it surely begs the question what it takes to make her happy. In fact a tentative answer is available to this seemingly rhetorical poser. Unconfirmed reports say that what Jayalalitha would really like is to be able to scrutinise every file pertaining to her cases. It really must seem a pity to her that all these cases had to spoil things, inter alia, because it prevents her from nominating herself to the job that Kumar has just relinquished. That surely would saveher and her unfortunate nominees a good deal of trouble and the BJP government embarrassment for having periodically to accept or demand her ministers’ resignation.

The fireworks would start now if she were to really start interfering in North Block in too unsubtle and insistent a way. The BJP can afford to look the other way, at the price of some loss of goodwill, if she restricts her behaviour to the barely acceptable. That would become difficult if panic made her discard even the semblance of propriety. It begins to look as though Jayalalitha, leave alone being concerned with ethical considerations about conduct in a coalition, does not quite understand the meaning of enlightened self-interest. Kumar’s departure does not affect the government in a particularly adverse way. But she had best note that things have changed for the BJP-led government since her last tantrum and that it is far better placed to call her bluff now than before its nuclear tests. Her brinkmanship, while it could upset the applecartfor everybody, is especially against her own interests just at the moment. It is a lesson she should learn quickly if she is not set upon shooting herself in the foot.