Author: Aditya Sinha
Publication: The New Indian Express
Date: February 6, 2010
URL: http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/print.aspx?artid=DbFF7nSNBQM=
A week ago, the UPA government postponed the
auction of 3G spectrum till the next fiscal. This despite the fact that Finance
Minister Pranab Mukherjee was counting on collecting a cool Rs 35,000 crore
to help tackle the massive deficit India has racked up (unless it comes down,
he will lack monetary tools to fight inflation and will have no room for new
Budget initiatives). Reports mention some hogwash about a delay by the army.
The true story can be heard in a certain house in CIT Nagar, Chennai, wherein
lives a powerful woman whose discretion is inversely proportional to her political
ambitions for her daughter. She complains about how her second favourite politician,
Telecom Minister A Raja, has been marginalised by the UPA government. The
fact of the spectrum postponement seems to support her suspicions.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi probably
saw the postponement coming. Earlier that same week, a tectonic shift in Tamil
Nadu's politics took place when bête noire J Jayalalithaa went to Delhi
and met Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Karunanidhi apparently flew into
a rage at his intelligence officials. Aren't you supposed to be tapping her
phone? he shrieked. She did not book a commercial flight but went by a chartered
plane, was all they could mumble.
The old man is trying to put a brave face
on things, but events are not going as planned. It started well enough: a
comeback win in the Lok Sabha polls, M K Stalin's anointment as deputy CM,
the party bagging bypoll after bypoll… And then, an astrologer (yes,
the Great Rationalist is not averse to sneaking a peek into his future) told
Karunanidhi that his life span was, well, coming to a close this July. The
CM has taken this prediction to heart. He knows that after he goes, Chemicals
Minister M K Alagiri is not going to reconcile to Stalin as CM. He knows that
Alagiri's frustration will tear the party apart, since Alagiri is a far stronger
political force than Stalin. Karunanidhi's only hope for his family is to
put them in power for another five years with Stalin as CM, and hope for the
best.
So Karunanidhi has been preparing for an early election, one that may even
take place mid-2010. As the last Lok Sabha elections proved that voters in
the state can be bribed into re-electing incumbents, he recently summoned
a state minister and a former Union minister, both of whom are reputedly resourceful,
to go out and start "election work". You might have noticed a lot
of babies being named or their earlobes getting pierced by DMK politicians
these days. These functions provide a good venue for the start of "election
work".
Yet Karunanidhi hoped the alliance with the
Congress would continue; it gave him ministers at the Centre (though he did
not reciprocate in the State) with lucrative portfolios, even if they embarrassed
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. If you recall, Jayalalithaa made an overture
to the Congress a year ago, before the Lok Sabha elections, asking the party
to desert the DMK which was a "sinking ship". A well-kept secret
from those days is that Congress scion Rahul Gandhi responded to this overture.
He even met emissaries - though not from the AIADMK - in Delhi to try and
convert the overture into a formal alliance.
Sonia fortunately saved the day for Karunanidhi
by turning down Rahul's suggestion of aligning with Jayalalithaa, and she
advised her son to focus on UP - a focus that paid rich political dividends.
The old man has puzzled over why Rahul wanted
to dump him and hook up with Jayalalithaa. Some have told him that Rahul is
unlike his sister Priyanka in many ways, one of them being his attitude to
those who killed his father Rajiv Gandhi. While Priyanka was willing to meet
Nalini, one of the assassins currently trying to have her life sentence commuted,
in family discussions Rahul has reportedly differed. He could not be bothered
about the people who killed his father. And he, it is said, dislikes Karunanidhi
for the latter's support to and defense of the killers. Perhaps that explains
why Rahul did not call on the old man when he visited the state in September
to help revitalise the Congress.
Sonia, however, stuck by Karunanidhi, and
he was banking on this alliance continuing for the advanced state assembly
elections. But something has made Sonia change her mind. The state Congress
leaders may insist that nothing be read into the two ladies' meeting; but
for a man like Karunanidhi who eats, breathes and sleeps politics, the writing
is on the wall. The meeting on the occasion of the Election Commission's diamond
jubilee in Delhi was engineered by Sonia herself, possibly through Chief Election
Commissioner Navin Chawla, who for years has been a Sonia confidante.
Sonia has obviously calculated that the UPA
does not need the DMK's 19 MPs, even if the AIADMK's nine MPs don't fully
replace them. So it might happen that the Congress' vote block will not help
push DMK candidates over the victory line in various assembly constituencies.
What will surely happen, though, is that the election commission will be extra
vigilant during the assembly elections. Karunanidhi knows that might cramp
Alagiri's style.
After Sonia and Jayalalithaa met, the old
man summoned his sons and explained to them what it meant. So what, Alagiri
thundered, we can win these assembly elections on our own. Alagiri's strategy
apparently is not to focus on all 234 assembly seats in the state, but on
only 150 winnable ones. He thinks the last Lok Sabha elections prove that
with his new strategies, the DMK can win these many seats on its own. How
can he be sure? He is said to believe he can think up 2,500 crore reasons
for victory.
Karunanidhi may not be as sanguine as his
son; a vigilant EC and an embittered Rahul Gandhi are both factors not to
be trifled with. Yet what choice does he have? He is pretty much locked into
an advanced election. All he can do is wonder why Sonia had a change of heart.
Is it because his buddy is no longer the National Security Advisor? Is it
because the headaches Sonia has been given ever since the powerful YSR Reddy
died (first his son tried to pressure the party into making him CM, and now
the Telangana debacle)? Does Jayalalithaa represent a more reliable ally than
Stalin-Alagiri in 2014, when Rahul will contest to be the next PM?
Who knows? All that is certain is that 2010's
political event will not be Bihar's assembly elections (which CM Nitish Kumar
has under control) or the Maharashtra civic polls (the posturing for which
is generating a lot of heat on TV and among middle-class twitterati, but not
among voters). It will be the change in Tamil Nadu.
