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The Latent Mood Swing

Pollsters and analysts alike missed emotive and historical clues to the BJP-AIADMK appeal

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The Latent Mood Swing
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THE dramatic comeback staged by the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu, proving all pre-election surveys and exit polls wrong, is a grim reminder that statistical methods are ineffective in gauging the latent popular mood. A closer scrutiny reveals that the electoral verdict is a combination of history, the anti-incumbency factor and the right alliances. However, the single-most important issue that tilted the scales in favour of the AIADMK-BJP alliance was the serial blasts at Coimbatore days before the state went to the polls.

First, history. In Tamil Nadu, whenever there has been dramatic election-eve violence, the verdict has been in favour of the perceived victim. In 1967, the DMK's star campaigner, M.G. Ramachandran, was shot in the neck by fellow actor M.R. Radha during electioneering. It was not fatal but MGR suffered from speech impairment. In that election, the key image was MGR with a blood-soaked bandage round his neck. That single image spelt doom for the Congress.

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Later, in 1984, when MGR was hospitalised in the US and Indira Gandhi assassinated, the electorate returned the Congress-AIADMK combine in a dramatic manner to Delhi. The assassination of Rajiv Gandhi during the 1991 elections also produced a stunning verdict in Tamil Nadu, with the DMK and its allies being completely routed in both the assembly as well as parliamentary polls.

It is in this context that the impact of the Coimbatore bomb blasts should be viewed. The fact that the BJP candidate in Coimbatore, C.P. Radhakrishnan, emerged as the winner with a margin of well over 1.4 lakh votes, the highest in the state, is a pointer to the tendency of the Tamil Nadu vote weighing in favour of the perceived victim.

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The tone of the respective campaigns is significant in this context. Former chief minister and AIADMK supremo J. Jayalalitha and her alliance took cognisance of the electorate's susceptibility to passionate appeals and went all out to strike an emotive chord. But DMK chief minister K. Karunanidhi and TMC chief G.K. Moopanar's campaign had an underlying sense of spite and malice vis-a-vis Jayalalitha.

 Then there is the anti-incumbency factor. Two major issues which the DMK government failed to address had a major bearing in this election: polarisation along caste and communal lines. The serial bomb blasts in Coimbatore has pushed a sizable section of the people into the Hindutva fold as the government was perceived to be very soft on Muslims. Says Ela Ganesan, state general secretary of the BJP: "By effectively blurring the difference between ideological stance and governance, the DMK has paid the price for creating an atmosphere of permissiveness for violence in the state. In 1989-90, it was the Eelam issue and now it is the question of Islamic fundamentalism. Both have extra-territorial ramifications. Somewhere down the line the DMK should learn to make the distinction between the ideology and good governance."

 In the southern districts, the caste violence between the Mukkulathurs—an umbrella caste formation which includes the Thevar, Maravar and Kallar subsects—and the Dalits has alienated the DMK-TMC combine from the electorate. While the Mukkulathurs, a community to which Jayalalitha's close aide Sasikala Natarajan belongs, felt that the DMK was targeting their community by filing cases against the first family of the erstwhile regime, the Dalits felt that an opportunity to have a transport corporation named after their leader Sundaralingam was sabotaged by Karunanidhi when he opted to remove all caste and leader names from transport corporations and districts.

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Consequently, the Mukkulathurs voted en masse for the AIADMK, while the Dalits preferred the newly formed party, Pudiya Tamizhagam, which shares certain characteristics with the RPI in Maharashtra and the BSP in Uttar Pradesh.

IN the case of Nadars, the other dominant community, to which TMC candidate and the outgoing minister of state for youth affairs Dhanuskodi Adityan belongs, there is widespread anger against the DMK-TMC front over the Tamil Nadu Mercantile Bank (TMB) issue. The TMB was a private sector bank owned by the Nadar community but, due to some internal wrangling, one section sold off its major shares to the Essar group.

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Even as the Nadars were demanding RBI intervention, the cash-strapped Essar group sold its newly acquired holding to an NRI. The Nadars then urged Union ministers P. Chidambaram and Murasoli Maran to force the NRI to sell back the shares to the community. With no legal provisions to force someone to part with his shares, the ministers expressed helplessness but promised to facilitate negotiations with the NRI. This was seen as an act of treachery and could explain Dhanuskodi Adityan's defeat at the hands of film actor Ramarajan, who happens to be a Nadar.

However, one cannot stretch the anti-incumbency factor beyond a point because the DMK has won both the by-elections for the state assembly (Conoor in the Nilgiris and Arpukottai in Sivakasi) which were held along with the Lok Sabha polls. That is, the people have voted for the DMK at the state level and opted for the AIADMK front at the national level—indicating support for the stability plank.

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Missed alliances too played a crucial role. The DMK-TMC leadership was adamant on giving allies as few seats as possible to ensure the maximum number of MPs in post-election bargaining. This proved to be their undoing, as potential allies like the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) and the CPI(M) ate into their votebank. During negotiations, these two parties had pleaded for just two seats each. The PMK subsequently went with the AIADMK and successfully managed to win in four constituencies.

Says N. Shankariah of the Tamil Nadu unit of the CPI(M): "Though the DMK had formed a three-member team to discuss the seat sharing with the alliance partners, none were willing to open their mouth. They kept saying, get clearance from Moopanar. We spent considerable time shuttling between Moopanar's house and Karunanidhi's residence. A section of the TMC leadership wrongly perceived that we were responsible for denying prime minis-tership to Moopanar in 1997. They knew that unlike other parties we could not go and tie up with the AIADMK-BJP front and offered us just one seat. Because of their intransigence, today the entire secular polity is under severe strain."

 He has a point. In Madurai, for instance, the CPI(M) candidate polled well over a lakh votes while the TMC candidate A.G.S. Rambabu lost to Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy (an ally of the AIADMK) by a margin of just 20,000 votes.

As for the PMK, says its founder S. Ramdoss: "Karunanidhi wanted to repeat the same mistake of 1996. While we had been with him throughout, during the elections he wanted to give us pittance and said that though he could not give us place in the assembly and Parliament, he had enough space in his heart. Even this time, it was evident that all he was prepared to offer us was a place in his heart. My party cadres felt that the time had come for us to get a place in Parliament. Jayalalitha knew her strength and weakness and was more accommodative. She gave us five seats and we have won four of them. A possibility which would have remained a pipedream if we had gone with the DMK."

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THE DMK-TMC combine also failed to lure away rebel AIADMK members who would have been thrilled with a lone seat for their leader S. Thirunavukkarasu. That proved costly. Thirunavukkarasu polled 2.26 lakh votes in Pudukottai where DMK candidate P.N. Siva lost to the AIADMK's Raja Paramasivam by just 30,000 votes.

Similarly, the Dalit party Pudiya Tamizhagam's K. Krishnaswamy had been demanding just one seat. In the event, he polled 1,23,592 votes at Tenkasi, eating heavily into TMC candidate M. Arunachalam's vote and costing him his seat. And in Tiru-nelveli, the DMK candidate, filmstar Sharath Kumar, lost his election by a margin of 6,000 votes while the Pudiya Tamizhagam candidate secured 86,419 votes.

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And then, there is the stability plank. Analysing the results, says the CPI state secretary R. Nallakannu: "In a state where the question of stability has an overarching bearing, the fact that the United Front was not seen to be united even in accommodating the front partners has contributed to the debacle. Somehow people felt that we could not be united at the Centre if we were not united at the state. Some of the internal bickerings like those between the TMC and the CPI(M) over Moopanar's failure to become PM and between some of the second-rung DMK and TMC leaders had indeed created such an impression. People witnessed the downfall of Janata government in 1979, the National Front in 1990 and the recent UF government. On the other hand, the BJP-AIADMK combine projected only Vajpayee as PM. The UF's nuanced arguments that only the parliamentary party could elect a prime minister and that there is no dearth of prime ministerial candidates in the UF did not appeal to the people."

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 All of which begs the question: why did the opinion polls fail, which had forecast a virtual DMK-TMC sweep, to pick up the mood of the electorate? Most pollsters put this down to the late swing that presumably took place following the Coimbatore blasts. A large chunk of this late support, it is claimed, came from undecided voters and those who had earlier planned to vote Congress.

For her part, Jayalalitha has maintained a surprisingly low profile. She is yet to meet the press, barring a couple of interviews, but has made her dissatisfaction with the press clear through a statement: "Newspapers and private TV channels functioned in a partisan manner. Opinion polls were conducted by forces opposed to the AIADMK. Our aim is to bring back MGR's rule in the state and that day is not far off."

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 Now Jayalalitha's single-point agenda is to get the DMK government dismissed. Says she: "There has been a total failure of the police intelligence. It is an issue of national security. The only solution is to have a change of government in Tamil Nadu. But first, let the new government in Delhi assume power." Clearly, any BJP regime at the Centre will find it hard to resist her demands, given the importance of her 17 MPs.

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