Jayalalitha is one of the main beneficiaries of the feud in the Karunanidhi clan It's not just Sun TV playing up her sound-bytes but also Maran-owned newspaper Dinakaran which now finds them worthy of being hyped up.
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by Pushpa Iyengar
Sunrise In Amma's Corner
(July 03, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) One of the beneficiaries of the feud in the Karunanidhi clan is the mercurial leader of the AIADMK, Jayalalitha. There was a time when Sun TV splashed over and over again the midnight arrest of Karunanidhi in May 2001 to underline that Jayalalitha, the then CM, was the villain of the piece. But now, with the tectonic shifts in the power-equations that put the Marans in the doghouse vis a vis the Karunanidhis, Jayalalitha's enemy's enemy has become her friend.
Even as the Marans are engaged in a turf war on who gets the cable footprint in Tamil Nadu since the CM's son M K Azhagiri launched his Royal Cable Vision recently, Jayalalitha's sound bytes -- mostly aimed at Karunanidhi's governance on a daily basis-- have become a regular fixture on Sun TV. While earlier her statements used to be routinely ignored, even the Maran-owned newspaper Dinakaran now finds them worthy of being hyped up. It is perhaps just a coincidence that Jayalalitha also gave over 20 pages of advertisements to Dinakaran when she turned 60 on February 24. The Maran camp says the ads were about business and not politics.
But after Azhagiri blocked the Maran brothers from wishing their grand-uncle Karunanidhi for his 85th birthday on June 3, they seem less neutral and are now clearly courting Jayalalitha. It's very clear that M K Stalin's wish to patch up with the Marans has been over-ridden by the animosity of Azhagiri towards the brothers who set off the TV revolution in TN.
Azhagiri as Robin Hood
Incidentally, Azhagiri is seen as a Robin Hood in Madurai, his base since his father sent him there over a decade ago. He's on every poster in Madurai whether some DMK member is celebrating a marriage, a christening--even when a girl child's ears are pierced or when girls reach puberty. As my taxi-driver Ganesan told me during a recent visit: "With Azhagiri, what you see is what you get. There's no artifice." The Marans -- particularly Dayanidhi -- might have been the darling of head honchos when he was union minister for technology, but he did not exactly endear himself to the masses or for that matter, to the DMK cadre. Which is why when Dayanidhi exited the party, not even crocodile tears were shed by the cadre.
Kalaignar Courts
This week Kalaignar got a vote of confidence from the Madras high court. "Karunanidhi is well-known for his statesmanship, shrewdness and deft command in solving contentious issues in a popular way that was persuasive for those interested in deeper reflections." The court was commenting on the CM's directions to his administration after it expressed its displeasure about "katta panchayats." Karunanidhi had declared at the bicentenary of the Thanjavur District Court a day earlier: "We, the descendants of Justice Party, will never conduct ourselves to the detriment of justice and will behave so as to protect justice."
But last September, days after getting the devotees in a tizzy by asking, "Who is Ram? Was he a civil engineer?" at the height of the Sethusamudram Shipping Canal Project (SSCP) controversy, the CM had even tried to defy the Supreme Court. The ruling party had sponsored a statewide bandh on October 1, and Karunanidhi and his clutch of ministers were out to thumb their noses at the judiciary till a SC bench stepped in terming the bandh illegal. The CM then hastily went over to his office in Fort Saint George to push some papers and let his cadre convert the bandh into a day-long fast in support of the project.
But Karunanidhi knows for sure when to draw the line and when to push the right buttons which is why he was all praise for the Apex Court upholding the validity of the 27 per cent reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBC) in higher education.
Kangaroo Courts
But there seems to be a disconnect between the CM's orders or, for that matter, a court order to the administration, and the ground situation. Take two recent cases where the state administration has been silent despite panchayats violating all rule of law with impunity. Take two recent cases of "ex-communication" and "ostracisation".
In March, 34 members of the families of fishermen Murali and his four brothers -- Ravi, Mahesh, Kumar and Sathish -- were ostracised from their fishing hamlet in Thazhankuppam because they took up contract work for loading and unloading goods in a private shipping firm. If you think the community elders did not approve of the work they undertook, you'd be mistaken. The real cause, as one villager put it was that "the money they earned should have been shared with the community-- which they didn't. The crux of the problem seemingly was that the contract work led to prosperity in one family while the remaining 2,400 fisherfolk in the village had a hard time getting by. But the brothers claimed that ten arbitrarily selected village heads were behind their banishment. In any case, they somehow worked out a compromise and returned to the hamlet last week. Apparently at their peril, because six of the 34 were assaulted putting them in hospital. Now they would rather stay in hospital than go back to what used to be their homes.
Talk of kangaroo courts and a silent administration. In the other instance in Kannathur, in Kanchipuram district, despite a high court order, neither the police nor government officials have lifted a finger when the panchayat forcibly took possession of permanent houses, that were constructed at a cost of Rs 2.5 lakh each, allotted to 11 families. These houses were among 72 constructed by a Chennai NGO under a tsunami rehabilitation project. But the village panchayat banished the 11 families after taking away their keys, and even assaulted members of three families. After a representation from these evicted families, they were allowed back in the village six months ago but made to stay in their old huts. When these villagers went to court, the district collectorate, in its submission, said it was afraid of taking action for fear of a "law and order" situation.
Why is so much tax payers money going towards policemen's salaries if they cannot protect citizens? Incidentally, both these villages are just outside Chennai and not in some remote inaccessible part of the state.
- Sri Lanka Guardian
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