DC Edit | Vijay’s Equitable Approach Like A Breath Of Fresh Air
Handling the Leader of the Opposition whose party is an ally and member of his TVK government in the state with a spontaneous warmth that is to be associated with persons belonging to the same generation, Vijay, as the chief minister of a state, also showed that he could be pragmatic about maintaining cordiality in a federal setup when dealing with a very senior figure like the Prime Minister
On a busy weekend when he hosted Rahul Gandhi to a long lunch to be followed by coffee and desserts on Saturday and then accompanied Narendra Modi to every event that had been built into the Prime Minister’s itinerary in Chennai on Sunday, Tamil Nadu chief minister C. Joseph Vijay brought to fractious contemporary politics a breath of breezy fresh air.
Handling the Leader of the Opposition whose party is an ally and member of his TVK government in the state with a spontaneous warmth that is to be associated with persons belonging to the same generation, Vijay, as the chief minister of a state, also showed that he could be pragmatic about maintaining cordiality in a federal setup when dealing with a very senior figure like the Prime Minister.
It is not as if how Vijay handled the weekend was in any way akin to running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. There is no moral dilemma in maintaining good relations with friends and amiability with foes of the political firmament. It is a pity that in today’s fractured political environment, civility is too often shown the door to be replaced by shrill political idiom.
Vijay cut a completely different figure from his predecessor M.K. Stalin, who used to wake up each morning ready to rant against the Centre — on Hindi imposition, denial of funds, policy matters ranging from Sri Lanka to sharing GST and other revenues, social justice, etc. The anti-Centre positioning on every contentious issue got to a point that it may even have proved counterproductive in the polls.
There is no knowing if Vijay’s demands for funds, particularly from the SSA due to the state but without conditions, metro rail for two more cities and development of crucial highway connectivity in the state that were put softly and in a businesslike manner without a tinge of rancour will work magic in convincing the Centre to be far more generous with federal funds and projects for Tamil Nadu. It is a route well worth taking since cordiality never hurts while rants filled with invective invariably do.
How long the celebratory ties between two political celebrities will last is a crore-rupee question, but Vijay has been good to the extent that he is prepared to be amicable if that helps his state fare better with the Centre than Tamil Nadu ever did when the DMK-BJP kept seeing each other as polar opposites. Vijay’s approach elicited the assurance from the PM that he was willing to work with Vijay to take Tamil Nadu to greater heights.
Not viewing every issue through a political lens has been Vijay’s forte thus far though he has only been in office for months rather than decades like other players. However, he is in politics for the long run. The latest Assembly byelection results that gave his party two seats to bolster coalition's tally comfortably above the simple-majority mark may have been reassuring in that his charisma is intact in attracting the voter to the polling booth.
Ruling parties do enjoy an advantage in bypolls as we saw in Bengal’s Nandigram and Rejinagar and in Assam where the poll was held for a Lok Sabha seat, but Vijay’s wins in Tamil Nadu came in two tough seats and were important in keeping TVK’s momentum after it broke a six-decade monopoly of Dravidian parties. It is easy to conclude then that Vijay is “batting” well after beginning his political “innings” brightly after retiring from his career in cinema.
