Small screen saver for DMK

While the Democratic Progress Alliance (DPA) led by the DMK and Congress has won convincingly with 163 seats, the latter owns an ominous hold over the party in power. The DMK has 96 seats in the 234 seat assembly, which is a solid lead over the 69 that Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK-led alliance has, but the Congress with 34 and the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), dominated by S. Ramdoss and his Vanniyar caste, has 18. The number game for the DMK would therefore involve frequent bargaining.

In the Lok Sabha elections held in 2004, the DMK-alliance had a landslide. The current verdict is not in the same league. Plenty of water has flowed down the Cauvery since then, and a tsunami swept into coastal Tamil Nadu months after the landslide win, at least mildly altering politics in some regions. Jayalalithaa made a clear political issue of the slaying of forest brigand Veerappan in October, 2004, and her tsunami relief work is regarded by many as creditable. Apart from her promotion of water harvesting, she also boasted of steps like promoting self-help groups for women. Her campaign saw popular actor, Sarathkumar, with his base among the influential Nadars, switching sides to join Jayalalithaa, after Vaiko’s MDMK had performed a similar, dramatic act.

If, despite all this, Jayalalithaa did not win, the reasons must lie deeper in the system. The DPA ended up with a vote share just short of 45 per cent, while Jayalalithaa’s alliance totalled nearly 40 per cent. Given the vagaries of the first-past-the-post system, the alliance clearly gave DMK the edge. The key point here is that DMK and Congress are both major parties in the state with a historical strength in committed votes. Jayalalithaa’s mentor, the late MGR, successfully co-opted the Congress to work a similar magic. But Jayalalithaa’s negative chemistry with Sonia Gandhi is such that Congress has embraced the DMK it once suspected of strong links with the assassins of Rajiv Gandhi.

The politics of catchy promises works better at the hustings than structural measures like self-help groups. But a more erudite view could be that that slow economic growth is bad for incumbent parties. An Express study revealed that Tamil Nadu’s annual compound economic growth rate was only 1.97 per cent between ’01 and ’04/’05, down from 6.33 per cent in the previous five years. In the caste-and-pancake world of Tamil Nadu politics, economic growth may not be part of the widespread political discourse, but its impact should have been there.

It is also significant that PMK’s seats have been eroded by the arrival of movie star Vijaykanth’s new party, the Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam, which cut into Vanniyar votes in the northern parts of the state and eroded his seats. In other words, despite strong committed vote banks and catchy promises, the DMK’s strength as well as alliance are vulnerable to grassroots caste influences and the vagaries of coalition politics. And perhaps it is symbolic that Sun TV, owned by the extended family of Karunanidhi, made a spectacular stock market debut even as the election juggernaut rolled on. Rivals accuse the DMK of misusing the might of the market-leading cable network for poll propaganda. Taking into account Sun TV and DMK’s promises, it can be said that Tamil Nadu’s politics has moved on from big screen glamour to small screen shenanigans.

madhavan.n@expressindia.com