Tags:
Journalism of Courage
There8217;s no such thing as a free lunch. So the lavish 45-course Pongal spread that Jayalalithaa laid out for the BJP8217;s man of the moment, Narendra Modi, is surely a sign of things to come. BJP General Secretary Ravi Shankar Prasad, who played chaperone at the lunch, came away hinting at 8216;wide-ranging discussions8217; on state and national politics. The combination makes sense, given that the BJP hasn8217;t made a real dent in the South yet, and Amma, even when out of power, is a formidable power. The BJP hopes that a joint platform with Jaya might even help them in the upcoming Karnataka polls, after the Deve Gowda debacle.
But Jayalalithaa is a prima donna without parallel. She has played a back-and-forth politics with the BJP. Back in 1998, she kept the Vajpayee government on tenterhooks, eventually leading to its collapse a year later. Then, she threw them over after the electoral alliance fell flat in 2004, and feuded over the Kanchi Sankaracharya. But this year, she has been making over-and-over-and-overtures to the party, beginning with the Ram Sethu agitation. She endorsed
Then again, the BJP and the AIADMK are each other8217;s natural options, and the 45-course meal might be the only thing that offered a semblance of choice. Either way, a spoonful of sakkarai pongal might be just the thing to sweeten a curdled political alliance.
