JUST SPAMMING | Dichotomies That Show Up When Elections Come
Both the national parties are now suffering from delusions of grandeur, triggered by the half-baked or rather wrong advice given by their honchos from other States having no inkling about the political dynamics of the State
At last, after a prolonged period of dithering, the two top national parties of the country, the BJP and the Congress, finally decided who from their respective parties would be contesting in the Tamil Nadu Assembly elections in the seats allotted to them by the Dravidian majors. In the State where the regional parties are the bosses when it comes to elections, the national parties have been playing the second fiddle though at times they remember their power and supremacy and try to browbeat the regional allies in vain. For, the enduring fact about the national political behemoths is that in Tamil Nadu they are dependent on the regional parties.
But what has that fact have to do with the inordinate delay in finalizing the candidate list by both the national parties this time – both could release their lists with just one working day left for filing of nominations – and is there anything common between them? Of course, yes. Both the national parties are now suffering from delusions of grandeur, triggered by the half-baked or rather wrong advice given by their honchos from other States having no inkling about the political dynamics of the State. It is true that the State stands aloof, keeping out of the national mainstream in many aspects but is successfully competing and beating every State on job generation, industrialization, education, health care and poverty and hunger alleviation.
For leaders of both national parties, Tamil Nadu has always been an enigma as far as political aspirations and trends go. It started in 1967 when the State became the first province to break free from the national narrative by electing the DMK government, bubbling with regional aspirations. Much water has flown down the bridges over the River Cooum since then but the regional aspirations continue to overwhelm the national dreams for obvious reasons. The Congress party, which suffered the first jolt to its hegemony in the State due to the rise of regional assertion, somehow reconciled to it and started playing along with the trend and becoming the ally of the DMK in its bid to recapture New Delhi.
The BJP, too, started scouring for allies in the State though it has established itself firmly at the helm of the nation and all over most of the country. Suddenly the national parties felt, as their actions indicated, that they could capture Tamil Nadu, too, when the Assembly elections for 2026 beckoned them or even ahead of that. It was that wily thought of winning over Tamil Nadu through stratagem that led to some storms and uproars in the political arena in the run up to the elections. First, it was the BJP that believed that its ideology has given roots in the State at least in places that have a popular presence of temples. Whoever told them so did not know the soul of the State but the temple theory was turned into a poll strategy by the BJP.
So the BJP started concentrating on temple towns by organising visits by top leaders and proclaiming its ideology from such terrain with a hope of gaining popularity and felt that by fielding its candidates in those constituencies will give them an edge. So it set its eyes on the AIADMK that had earlier displayed extreme recalcitrance and even walked out of the NDA and managed to bring its leaders around. The BJP leaders thought that they could strike a hard bargain with the AIADMK, overwhelm it and lead the NDA in the State, too.
Of course it managed a lot by wresting 27 of the total 234 seats from the alliance leader and was perhaps biding its time to stage the coup in the coalition. But what it missed in the process was cultivating those constituencies through human resources and could not find candidates for them to field in the Assembly elections.
The same sort of thing happened to the Congress, too. At the behest of its national level leaders with scant or no understanding of grassroots dynamics, the party wrangled with the DMK persistently, holding close to its chest the fond belief that it has grown enormously in the popularity stakes in the State without bothering to check on the ground level for indicators and almost drove the decade long alliance to the edge of the abyss. But when the Congress was handed down 28 constituencies to contest, it was seen going in rounds to identify the right candidate who could win people’s goodwill.
Actually, the Congress believed that it had been sitting on the sidelines for too long, since 1967, and wanted a slice in the power pie that the DMK would enjoy on its own if their alliance won the April 23 elections. So it raised a demand for a share in power and almost sunk the coalition. But the DMK stood its ground and salvaged the alliance. Even the AIADMK-BJP alliance faced a similar situation when top honchos of the BJP, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, were exulting over the possibility of the NDA winning the polls in Tamil Nadu.
Initially, they even refused to acknowledge the NDA in Tamil Nadu as a coalition led by the AIADMK, which it actually was, but later on acceded to it by vacating the driver’s seat after coming to terms with the persisting dichotomy between regional and national parties in the State.
