The 2011 Assembly elections are a major turning point in the political history of Tamil Nadu for at least four reasons.
Tamil Nadu is best known as the hotbed of the Dravidian movement, the non-Hindi, anti-Congress movement in Tamil Nadu that started in 1925 fighting issues like untouchability. The DMK, a part of that movement, took to the political platform to achieve its aims. But in time, it got sucked up in the web of cutthroat politics, dropping its agenda one by one. Also, the early leaders of the movement are long gone, leaving behind a lone General in the form of ‘Kalaignar’ Karunanidhi.
‘Kalaignar’, a prolific writer and a fighter with enormous staying power, is getting old. He is 86 and wheelchair-bound. It is an open secret that the government is run by his son, M.K. Stalin (born the same week as Russian leader Joseph Stalin died). Karunanidhi may not be able to ignore old age much longer. In the next elections in 2016, he would be 91, and too old for the bloody games of politics he once reveled in.
So, the current elections may well be the last for the classical Dravidian movement. A number of parties have prefixed ‘Dravida’ to their name but there is no one in those parties who can claim that legacy. Cinema is the only political ideology now in the state, ruled by film icons for the past 42 years.
The polls will also mark a generational change in Tamil Nadu politics after 22 years. It was in 1989 that Jayalalithaa led a faction of the AIADMK for the first time into the polls. Karunanidhi, who had fought against the likes of Kamaraj, Rajaji and MGR, is still reeling under the impact of her charisma.
Today, his own sons — Stalin and M.K. Azhagiri — are ready to replace him. The Congress party is increasingly leaning towards new leaders like G.K. Vasan and Karthi Chidambaram. Actor Vijaykanth has become a force to reckon with. These are the people that Jayalalithaa will henceforth worry about, not the old warhorse.
With so many leaders, votes are getting fragmented. The state’s vote bank first moved beyond the three giants—DMK, AIADMK and the Congress—in 1991 when PMK fought on a casteist agenda. More parties cropped up after that. All of them had to align with either DMK or AIADMK to survive, but that also meant the two giants had to part with more constituencies.
This time, the DMK is contesting in only 121 seats, just three more than the half-way mark. The AIADMK, too, has a number of smaller parties in its alliance and has been locked in a battle of nerves with them over seat-sharing. In other words, the two major parties will have to consider alliance partners in power equations. This could well be the dawn of coalition era in the state.
The fourth factor that makes this Assembly election so interesting to watch is the shrewd way in which the Congress Party is trying to reinvent itself in Tamil Nadu. It is fully exploiting the misfortune of DMK, forcing it to give away 63 seats, 15 more than the 2006 elections, and has cornered some juicy constituencies. Over the years, the vote share of Congress has fallen from 20 percent to just 8 percent. This is its best chance to reverse the trend.
Should the alliance scrape through, the Congress will dictate to DMK on government formation. But for now, the biggest worry for both parties is to get their hostile cadres to work together and put up a bloody good fight.
