Acrobatics in Tamil Nadu

Acrobatics in Tamil Nadu

Tamil Maanila Congress leader P. Chidambaram's statement, distancing himself from his party's decision to align with Jayalalitha, conforms to the politics of opportunism being practised in Tamil Nadu. His holier-than-thou attitude does not carry conviction for the simple reason that he does not seem to have put up any resistance to the TMC joining hands with the AIADMK. This casts doubts on his motives in the light of reports that he is looking for greener pastures. Chidambaram's feigned ignorance of the goings-on in the TMC notwithstanding, the electoral tie-up it has reached with the AIADMK is of a piece with the realpolitik now on display in the state. It did not matter to the TMC that it was formed in 1996 to protest against the Congress' decision to enter into an alliance with the AIADMK. From being a rebel against the brand of politics that Jayalalitha represented, the TMC transmogrified into a supplicant at Poes Garden. What's worse, TMC President G.K. Moopanar seems to have had no compunction inbargaining for some crumbs on behalf of the Congress. In fact, the whole grouping smacks of political immorality and opportunism, since there is nothing that binds the various parties together except their overweening desire to share the spoils of office.

The Congress should be extremely grateful to the TMC that it has managed to get a `respectable' 15 seats, against the five the AIADMK supremo had originally set apart for the grand old party. The Congress has only itself to blame for its present predicament. When Indira Gandhi entered into an unequal alliance with the Dravidian party to fortify her own position in the Lok Sabha, it was considered a grand strategy at that time. Little did the party realise then that three decades later it would be in such a miserable position as to depend on the bargaining skills of Moopanar to get even a toehold in the state. It is difficult to imagine that it is the same Congress which had a few years ago toppled a Union government because of its links with the DMK, which had allegedly been ``indicted'' by the Jain Commission. Today the same Congress has no problem sharing a platform with the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), whose affinity for the LTTE is too well known to need recapitulation. Does it imply that the Congress hasforsaken all that it stood for when, in the name of Rajiv Gandhi's memory, it pulled the rug from under the feet of the I.K. Gujral regime?

It may have been politically convenient for the alliance partners to delink Tamil Nadu from Pondicherry in striking a deal but the credulity of the voters in the two states will be on test when the Congress campaigns against the AIADMK and the PMK in Pondicherry and takes their support in the mainland. Of course, the Congress can take solace from the fact that the predicament of the Communists, who are with it in Tamil Nadu but oppose it in Kerala, is no different from theirs. As regards the voters, they know that these parties will behave like they did in the past once they come to power. They remember all too well the fact that the AIADMK ditched the Congress after sweeping the polls in the sympathy wave that followed in the wake of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination of 1991, only to come back to it later. That is the price political opportunism extracts from voters who fall for the promise of good governance made by the mother of sleaze.