Tamil Nadu at The Crossroads

A PROFOUND POLITICAL VACUUM

The death of Ms Jayalalitha, former Chief Minister and leader of the ADMK Party have left a profound vacuum in TN politics. That this happened at a time when Mr Karunanidhi, the supreme leader of the DMK, already in his nineties, entered a prolonged phase of intractable illness (he is now no more) makes the vacuum even more worrisome. And what happens to Tamil Nadu matters,  as the state is the third-largest in the country in terms of GDP and accounts for 6% of the country’s population.

The ADMK, which won the 2015 assembly elections, continues to rule the state with considerable courage and adroitness, but with so many hostile political forces at work, the government looks increasingly like a lamb surrounded by a pack of hungry wolves. So disturbing is the gap, the void, that a question, which would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, is beginning to be asked with some force: Is there a political alternative for Tamil Nadu, away from the two Dravidian parties?

Dr Subramanian Swamy did raise this question in an article he wrote for the Frontline in June 2003, in which he concluded that the Dravidian movement was on the verge of collapse under the weight of its inherent ideological contradictions(1). It is now fifteen years after that gloomy prognosis, and the Dravidian movement is still up and running. 

A BRIEF HISTORY OF POLITICS IN TAMIL NADU

In the pre-independence era, EVR Periyar, the revolutionary leader, saw the oppressive caste system as the major post-independence challenge to the progress of the state. He founded the DK party, the precursor to today’s DMK, and had a profound influence on political thought in the state (2).  He left an enduring legacy in the form of a society that is now more egalitarian and largely free of the oppressive aspects of the caste system.

For the first two decades after independence, the Congress party ruled the state, as indeed it did in the rest of India, as the only major, national party of the time. By the late nineteen sixties, however, the people of the state had become dissatisfied with that party, which was increasingly perceived to be corrupt, in the midst of whispers, growing ever louder, that this was “a party which had made a fine art out of corruption”.

In the 1967 assembly elections, the DMK won a landslide victory in which – can you believe it? -- a college student defeated Kamaraj, a political Titan of the time. (A saint-like, totally selfless politician, Kamaraj would look completely out of place in today’s Congress Party).  The DMK ruled the state for ten years.

Then came the great split in the DMK, with M G Ramachandran, a superstar in Tamil Cinema of that time, leaving the party to form a rival party, the ADMK. He was an instant success. His reputation as a leading movie star, who was not only generous but a true friend of the poor, had preceded him into the Chief Minister’s office, which he occupied for over 15 years.

It is a tribute to MGR’s charisma that, in 1984, the ADMK won the state assembly elections with a thumping majority for the third time in succession, at a time when he was actually in hospital undergoing treatment for a major illness. After his death, AIADMK was split over succession between various contenders until, eventually, Jayalalitha took over the party’s leadership.

For nearly half a century now, the two Dravidian parties – the DMK and the AIADMK – have been the dominant political force in the state, with one or the other party forming the government and the other sitting in opposition. The electoral decline of the Congress party at the national level, which started during the early 1990s, forced Congress to seek coalition partners from various states, including Tamil Nadu. This paved the way for the Dravidian parties to be part of the Central Government (3).

DIFFERENT TIMES CALL FOR DIFFERENT TUNES

That times change, as also the mood and needs of the electorate, is a reality not always appreciated by political parties.  Let us briefly trace the evolution of political ideas in Tamil Nadu during the past half-century:

1 The Congress party won three successive assembly elections in the state, as the only national party at the time, with no strong national or regional party to oppose it. It ruled largely on its democratic socialist platform, with a focus on heavy industry and major irrigation projects. Sub-national aspirations, which were dormant in the early fifties, eventually found expression in the linguistic reorganization of the states in the early 1960s.  Although a certain amount of social justice was achieved during the Congress rule,  there were still major problems crying out for attention – the oppressive aspects of the caste system and the lack of a strong, sub-national identity for the Tamil people.

It must be said, to the credit of the Congress Party, that, in its later incarnation in the first decade of the new century,  it conceived and implemented a truly innovative response to India’s massive unemployment, namely the 100-day National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. That this scheme fell short of its noble goals due to poor and often corrupt implementation has been a lot of many good schemes over the years and need not detract from the merit of this idea in a large, poor country like India.

2 The DMK, which was the successor to the DK of EVR Periyar, took up the unfinished social agenda, namely the caste system and the lack of a clear identity for the Tamil people. It had the ability, and a selfless leader in Anna Durai,  assisted by another Titan of the party, Karuna Nidhi. These two leaders, who had a strong background in Tamil theatre and cinema, helped in the effective articulation of the state’s pressing problems-- at a time when the state seemed ripe for major social change(4). The caste system was indeed oppressive: A small section of the population, who were English-educated and who owned the bulk of wealth,  monopolized opportunities for higher education and lucrative employment. By wielding the Tamil language as a political weapon and through a relentless campaign against the caste system, the DMK not only rose to power in the state in 1967 but also succeeded in giving the Tamils a strong sub-national identity through a sense of pride in the Tamil language, one of the world’s oldest languages, with a rich literature and culture of its own.

3 For nearly half a century between 1967 and 2018, the two Dravidian parties have dominated the political scene, with the DMK being elected five times and the ADMK being elected eight times.  The political agenda of these two parties looked rather similar: more social justice and more poverty alleviation(5,6). That, during the past five decades, these two parties have vied with each other in uplifting the poor and backward sections of the state to the lasting benefit of the latter will not be disputed. The ADMK’s greater success at the elections was perhaps due to that party’s greater appeal to the state’s women voters, given that the party’s supreme leader was a woman, who held her own, in a male-dominated political arena, against male opponents who were not always models of decency and decorum.

4 The paradigm shift came in the second decade of the present century when the ADMK formed the government in the state after the fourteenth assembly elections. That shift came with the state-wide launch of the Amma canteen, which, in my view, was a political master-stroke, achieving, at one shot, three major aims:

• A bold attempt at food security in the state
• Employment for hundreds of women across the state, and
• A broad base of support for ADMK from the women voters in the state

5 Before closing this section, a brief look at the Left Wing parties would be in order, mainly the CPI(Marxist) and the CPI. As the CPI is yet to demonstrate its ability to win elections, we will confine our attention to the CPI ( Marxist ) party, which has a strong political presence in at least two major states, namely West Bengal and Kerala. 

We must give credit to the CPI (Marxist) for doing well in two domains, namely  Land Reform and the Devolution of Power to Local Bodies, notwithstanding occasional whispers that this latter was a wonderful ploy for recycling funds from state coffers to party coffers. Both these initiatives gave the Marxists a powerful image on the political stage, and they seemed almost unbeatable in West Bengal, until, just a few years ago, Mamata Banerjee won the throne, after a bitter fight with political adversaries who were not paragons of chivalry and decency.    

We close this section with the proposition that when times change, the mood and the needs of the electorate also change, and political parties which do not come up with new narratives run the risk of being relegated to the background. For example, the Tamil identity was a good narrative some years ago. But, now, with a large section of Tamil youth, across the whole spectrum of castes and communities, taking up residence outside the state, many of them outside the country, the Tamil identity might seem less adequate than a strong national identity.

THE SEARCH FOR NEW NARRATIVES

There is no easy answer to this large and complex challenge – namely, coming up with new and currently relevant narratives.  That leaders of political parties need to be in close touch with their constituencies is the first answer that comes to mind, even though, in reality,  such leadership seems more the exception than the rule. There is a second, and more crucial, answer, and that is the need for political leaders to undertake periodic retreats, say one or two days, for self-renewal and for reinventing their parties. These retreats are best held at a resort town – a hill station or a beach resort -- so that participants can disengage their minds from their immediate worries and preoccupations and think about the future. It might be useful to co-opt, in these retreats, a couple of experts from the academic world, particularly in the fields of economics and political science.

Here is a list of illustrative questions that might unlock the door to new narratives

1 According to present estimates, a million Indians are entering the labour market every month—clearly a formidable challenge to a poor country. How are we going to cope with this challenge? Where are the additional jobs going to come from?

2 What about the farm sector? Is there any breakthrough in sight? What about the linking of rivers? The adoption of scientific farming methods? Crop insurance? Farm loans?

3 With the State giving more freebies and subsidies, a sense of entitlement seems to be creeping into the mind of the average citizen, robbing him of his will to work. How to counter this trend without abandoning the idea of social justice and poverty alleviation?

3 The relentless march of technology is rendering hundreds of jobs obsolete across the world, including in India. Do we have an adequate response to this challenge? There is some talk, these days, of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Do we understand this profound challenge in all its ramifications and have a strategy to meet it?

4 Throughout history, technological change has outpaced the process of human adjustment to that change. Are there some meaningful ways in which we can bridge that gap?

5 Inter-state disputes seem to be on the rise – (e.g.) the dispute about sharing the waters of the Cauvery river between Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and a couple of other southern states. It is time the country came up with a viable approach to such disputes while encouraging inter-state cooperation,  not just between state governments, but at the level of bureaucrats and the people of the states concerned.

Not so long ago, there was a potential water shortfall in some western regions of the United States, and the states concerned –  Arizona, California,Colorado,Nevada, and Oregon—got together on their own to solve the problem, without any prodding from the Federal government. An example that seems worthy of emulation.

6 Should politics continue to be characterized by bitter, inter-party rivalry? Can we not move to a system of mutual respect and cooperation? Can we not have some kind of power-sharing, say in the form of :

• Powerful inter-party committees on major problems confronting the state
• All party meetings on major challenges facing the state
• The chief minister holding  monthly breakfast meetings, with representatives of all the parties who have elected members in the State assembly 

In other words, should the opposition always feel like people left out in the political wilderness, devoting all their time and energy to organizing protest rallies and the photo opportunities that go with such rallies?

7 What about the monster of corruption? Has corruption become a way of life in this country? How do we slay this monster? I recall hearing from a couple of friends who occupied top positions in the state’s bureaucracy that corruption in Tamil Nadu is significantly more than in other states of South India. And, if rumours, and anecdotal evidence supporting them, are to be believed, the recent by-election in the R K Nagar constituency in Chennai was won largely through money power. If true, this raises a scary picture indeed and portends a dim future for a state that has all the potential to be the Number One state in the country.

TWO SUPERSTARS ENTERING THE FRAY

Recent months have witnessed some excitement in Tamil Nadu, with two superstars entering the political arena: Rajni Kant and Kamal Hasan.  It is early days to speculate on their likely impact on the state’s politics, but both are formidable stars, each with a significant fan following.

That these two titans of Tamil cinema chose this precise, psychological, moment to enter politics, after nearly half a century of dominance by two Dravidian parties, points to a possible paradigm shift in the politics of this state, a discontinuity, if you like, with profound implications for the future of the state.

The two major parties – the DMK and the ADMK -- seem to be at the crossroads, discovering, rather suddenly, that caste, the Tamil identity,  job reservations, democratic socialism, and other narratives used in the past look rather stale and matronly. They continue to be valid but no longer catch the imagination of the electorate. It is not clear that either of these two parties--the DMK and ADMK—has yet spotted this discontinuity in the political environment, but they look puzzled. As Sri Aurobindo famously declared: “We do not belong to past dawns, but to the noons of the future.”

THE NATURE OF POLITICAL LEADERSHIP

It might be worthwhile, at this stage, to reflect briefly on the nature of political leadership, particularly what it is not. Political leadership is more than just organizing protest rallies and rushing to TV cameras, although, to be sure, such rallies are an important part of the democratic process.  Leadership calls for patience, and the willingness, to understand the many complex, problems facing the state. First and foremost comes the realization that problems, even seemingly small ones, are multi-dimensional in nature and need to be understood in their many dimensions before any attempt at diagnosis, leave alone solutions.

As an example, let us consider the plight of the state’s fishermen in the narrow sea lane between Sri Lanka and India. What grabs media attention is the detention of some of our fishermen by the Sri Lankan Navy. Surely, there is a problem out there for our fishermen, but any long-term solution to that problem would need to be based on a sound grasp of the many dimensions of the problem, such as, for example :

• Is there a clear delineation of the international border, separating the waters of the two countries?
• Are there similar instances of Sri Lankan fishing boats straying into Indian waters?
• The fish stock on both sides of the international border
• How is this porous border monitored? Is there joint patrolling by the Navies of both countries?
• Are smugglers active in the area, involving innocent fishermen in their unlawful activities?
• Is it possible, as suggested by the rumour mill, that some political parties in Tamil Nadu work with fringe elements in Sri Lanka’s Tamil province to keep the Tamil agenda alive?
• The growing Chinese presence and influence in the Indian ocean
• Above all, what is the level of bilateral cooperation between India and Sri Lanka?

TO CONCLUDE

Tamil Nadu is at a crossroads, with a profound political vacuum blurring the vision of most players on the political stage. The state’s two major Dravidian parties seem to be discovering, rather suddenly, that their old slogans and narratives no longer have the same appeal to the electorate as in the past. A problem compounded by the entry of two titans of Tamil cinema into the political arena.  Both these parties, as also others in the state’s political arena,  need to reinvent themselves and come up with new narratives.

Break-through performance in any field of endeavour – industry, commerce, government or in politics, for that matter – can only be the outcome of patient attention to the many dimensions of the crucial problems and challenges of the moment. To be sure, there is much noise in the political domain – news channels hungry for sensation, leaders in search of followers, and the very public nature of most matters in government – but true leaders generally shun the limelight. They work patiently at understanding the massive challenges facing them before rushing headlong into action, leave alone TV cameras.

References

1 Subramanian Swamy, “IS THE DRAVIDIAN MOVEMENT DYING?”, Frontline, Volume 20, Issue of June 2003

2 The Justice Party was renamed the Dravidar Kazhagam (Dravidian Association) in September 1944 – Nambi Arooran, The Demand for Dravida Nadu

3 John Harris and Andrew Wyatt, THE CHANGING POLITICS OF TAMIL NADU IN THE 1990s, Conference on State      Politics in India in the 1990s: Political Mobilisation and Political Competition, December 2004.

4 Theodore Baskaran, THE ROOTS OF SOUTH INDIAN CINEMA, Journal of the International Institute, Volume 9, Issue 2, winter 2002.

5 “WITH THE HIGHEST RATE OF RESERVATION ALREADY IN PLACE, TN STAYS CALM”, The Financial Express, 28 May, 2006.

6 Cynthia Stephen, THE HISTORY OF RESERVATIONS IN INDIA FROM THE 1800s to the 1950s