| Clueless
in Tamil Nadu
Caste comes
to the fore in a waveless election
It is a first
for Tamil Nadu: Uncertainty looms not only over who will win the
assembly elections, but also over who ‘can’ be chief minister.
Tamil Nadu is a state known for extreme swings in the voters’
mood — if in 1991, the AIADMK swept the polls leaving just
one seat for its principal opposition, five years later the DMK
rode a wave losing just four constituencies to the AIADMK. But in
Election 2001, till news last came in and as the curtain falls on
campaigning for the May 10 elections, observers, pollsters and psephologists
are generally agreed that though it would appear to be advantage
Jayalalitha, it has been a waveless election so far in Tamil Nadu.
Even a hung Assembly is not ruled out by this knowledgeable tribe.
And then there is that other question. Can Jayalalitha be chief
minister should the alliance she leads be voted into power? In other
words, is the AIADMK chief still eligible for the office after her
conviction in two corruption cases and after she was debarred from
even contesting in these elections?
For Jayalalitha, this election has suddenly taken on the dimensions
of a now-or-never battle. Tamil Nadu’s Puratchi Thalaivi is
looking towards a favourable verdict from the people’s court
to absolve her of the crimes she has been convicted of by a court
less forgiving. Should she fail to win, the taint is bound to stick.
Her campaign has concentrated, therefore, on working up a sympathy
wave from the electorate — she has been eloquent about the
alleged DMK conspiracy that aims to eliminate her from the political
scene. While the election results will decide with a new piquancy
that old question of whether or not corruption is an issue with
the people, the suspense will not end with their verdict. If the
AIADMK-alliance wins, the issue of Jayalalitha’s eligibility
for chief ministership promises to keep constitutional-legal experts
profitably employed for at least some time to come. The resolution,
either way, both in political and constitutional terms, of l’affaire
Jaya is likely to decide much more than simply the political destiny
of one individual.
The unwieldy
and far less clear-cut contours of Tamil Nadu’s political configurations
in this electoral battle also bode long-term consequences. It is
for the first time that caste and its alliances have become the
dominant theme in electoral politics in Tamil Nadu. While it is
still, at the bottom of it, a two-horse race — the AIADMK versus
the DMK — the votes will no longer be as neatly divided as
they used to be. They are likely to be scattered among a host of
new actors — caste-based parties all, recently arrived on the
electoral scene. Both the DMK and the AIADMK had little choice but
to go in for hectic pre-poll tie-ups with these smaller outfits
that suddenly proliferate the political arena and control newly
etched out vote banks. So the AIADMK cultivates the Thevars, the
numerically strong backward class community in the south, and another
constituent of the AIADMK-led front, the PMK, has consolidated the
Vanniyars, a most backward class community in the north; Karunanidhi
evidently hopes to counter this combination by wooing the Dalits
and the other backward classes into the DMK fold. In the last instance,
the smarter arithmetic may win in Tamil Nadu. And once again, as
with the Jayalalitha question, the drama will only begin after the
verdict.
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