Looking Left, Aiming for Centre
Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa pitches for prime ministership by teaming up with the Left. But that doesn’t rule out a post-election alliance with BJP.
Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa pitches for prime ministership by teaming up with the Left.
In November 2013, Chennai hosted the World chess championship between local boy Viswanathan Anand and Norwegian challenger Magnus Carlsen. AIADMK legislator JCD Prabhakar, who is also president of the All India Chess Federation, almost made it seem as if J. Jayalalithaa, the Tamil Nadu chief minister, was herself in the fray. Posters and hoardings mixing chess metaphors with politics came up all over town driving home the point that Amma, as Jayalalithaa is referred to, will soon be King, ‘You always make the right moves’, ‘You are the Ultimate Champion’ went the choicest slogans.
A month later, AIADMK made the slogans official. At its general council at Vanagaram on the outskirts of Chennai on December 19, the party resolved to win all 40 Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry and make a Tamilian, read Jayalalithaa, the next prime minister. Stitching alliances with CPI and CPI(M) is a step in that direction. In fact, soon after the pact with CPI was
sealed, even the otherwise sombre A.B. Bardhan fawned, “If the alliance succeeds in the elections, prospects would open up for her.” The Chief Minister, on her part, said such issues would be dealt with later. But her partymen are more forthright. “Amma will become PM,” insists E. Madhusudhanan, the presidium chairman of AIADMK. “We need a leader with vision and a mission. Madam has both. She will be the most popular PM,” adds K. Malaisamy, former Tamil Nadu home secretary who is now a member of the party’s general council.
Clearly, AIADMK has sensed a chance. With rival DMK, which was routed in the 2011 Assembly polls, in turmoil over a power struggle between patriarch M. Karunanidhi’s sons, Jayalalithaa hopes to bag all 40 seats riding on her welfare agenda. In Tamil Nadu, Jayalalithaa is omnipresent. She smiles down at you from hoardings, reminding you that the idlis you had at any of the 300 Amma canteens as well as free laptops, fans, mixer-grinders and calves promised before the 2011 polls have all been delivered with her blessings.
Ironically, for all the rivalry between them, AIADMK’S high-decibel campaign to pitch Jayalalithaa for PM is seen as appropriation of Karunanidhi’s strategy to leverage Chennai’s power in Delhi. “She saw DMK playing a major role at the Centre by becoming part of the power set-up in Delhi for years. She wants to go one up and capture power,” says political analyst Gnani Sankaran.
Can she pull it off? The Left parties are trying to cobble up a Federal Front that could win between 125 and 150 Lok Sabha seats. The initiative is the brainchild of H.D. Deve Gowda, who supports Jayalalithaa’s bid to become prime minister. “She is not only competent, she might also have the numbers,” Gowda says. The pitch for prime ministership runs counter to the much-talked about friendship of Narendra Modi and Jayalalithaa that could translate into a post-poll alliance. “Two swords cannot be in one sheath. India needs a secular leader and Amma has the edge. If need be, BJP can support her for prime ministership. If Congress can support the AAP government, why can’t BJP do it with us?” asks an AIADMK leader. “Running the country is a simple matter for her.” AIADMK reckons a tie-up with BJP won’t benefit it much as the gains will be nullified by the loss of the minority vote. Besides, this would reduce Jayalalithaa to just another NDA partner. She is also not pleased with BJP for trying to woo her ally-turned-foe Vijayakanth’s DMDK.
BJP though has been making all the right noises about Jayalalithaa in the hope of doing business with her should it fall short of numbers in May. But it seems reluctant to go as far as backing her for the top job. “Experience shows the leader who wants to lead the nation must belong to the largest party in Parliament. Or the experiment won’t succeed,” says BJP’S Venkaiah Naidu.
Jayalalithaa is pushing the boundaries of her ambition beyond Tamil Nadu, but there are doubts if she has the ability. “She is the lone vote-catcher,” says Vaasanthi, author of Jayalalithaa: A Portrait, the 2011 biography against which the Chief Minister had secured a permanent court injunction before it was released. “Her party’s leaders’ existence depends entirely on her. She is ruthless, intolerant of criticism.” Adds
Gnani Sankaran, “Hers is the most undemocratic party in India. There is no second line of leadership and no innerparty democracy.”
Another hurdle is that unlike Modi, who has effectively marketed his development agenda outside Gujarat, little is known about Jayalalithaa’s administrative acumen outside of Tamil Nadu. Though hoardings boasting of her ability to solve all issues facing India—from Kashmir to Cauvery water-sharing to the disputed Katchatheevu island now administered by Sri Lanka—have come up in Chennai, no one really has an idea about her grand plans. She is admired for delivering efficient governance, but doubts remain if she can replicate the feat at the Centre in the absence of a clear majority. “So far, successful chief ministers have not been successful prime ministers. Take the case of Deve Gowda and Morarji Desai. There is a gap when you scale up from the state to the national level,” says M. Nandakumar of the Tamil Nadu chapter of FICCI. There is also much concern about whether Jayalalithaa, given her tough line on Sri Lanka—she didn’t allow even Lankan cricketers to play in IPL matches in Chennai in 2013—would look at key foreign policy issues only through the prism of Tamil Nadu.
Not surprisingly, it’s the DMK leadership that has hit out the hardest against Jayalalithaa’s pitch for a national role. M.K. Stalin, the party’s number two, points to cases of disproportionate assets against her. “How can such a person be prime minister?” he asks. DMK spokesperson TKS Elangovan adds, “When her voters who have elected her are suffering, she just writes letters. She already thinks she is the PM.”
A prime minister from the south is, however, an idea that resonates this side of the Vindhyas. “Our national figures have always been from the north. We had people like K. Kamaraj and C. Rajagopalachari, but they never aspired for the top post. Jayalalithaa is not only aspiring for it but also making the right moves. Why not?” says dramatist Y.G. Mahendran, with whom Jayalalithaa started her acting career at the United Amateur Artistes troupe in the early 1960s. “She has survived and come out on top in the very sexist and casteist politics of Tamil Nadu. It is an incredible feat for a woman and a Brahmin at that. So many politicians tried to destroy her. She went through hell but because of sheer willpower, she survived,” says Vaasanthi.
At any rate, the feeling gaining ground in Tamil Nadu is that the ‘Amma for PM’ pitch has galvanised the AIADMK cadre, which now has something substantial to work for. Even if the party wins 30-odd seats, it could be part of the power matrix at the Centre. Armed with the slogan ‘Fort St George (the seat of power in Tamil Nadu) to Red Fort’, the Chennai Express is ready to roll into New Delhi. For previous cover stories on Jayalalithaa, log on to www.indiatoday.in/jaya-past