Saturday 28 January 2012

Destructive criticism lands them in quagmire


Taking political stock in Tamil Nadu of the year 2009 that has gone by, English dailies published reviews in the last few days of the last year. The report in ‘The
Times of India’ on December 30 was given the headline “String of election victories keep Karunanidhi smiling”. ‘The New Indian Express’ on December 30 published the report under the caption ‘DMK, Congress consolidate their positions’ and the daily ‘Deccan Chronicle’ published its review on December 31 under the heading ‘DMK rules the roost’. Of course, these reports primarily dealt with the stellar performance of the DMK alliance in the Lok Sabha elections in the month of May last year and in the eight by-elections to different Assembly constituencies and the humbling of the opposition parties in the hustings. For obvious reasons they avoided making an objective political analysis underlying the remarkable electoral victories of the DMK and its alliance and the drubbing faced by the opposition.
Chief Minister and DMK President Kalaignar M.Karunanidhi presented, obliquely of course, a dispassionate political analysis for the flying colours of his rule and the decline of the opposition parties. Addressing a function in Chennai on the New Year Day to mark the inauguration of the Rs.256-crore scheme of distribution of dhotis and saris free to people on the occasion of Pongal and Tamil New Year, Kalaignar said the DMK government is willing to rectify its defects, if pointed out in a constructive manner. Reiterating that no government could be fully free of shortcomings, he said hurling charges just for the sake of it wasn’t true democracy. Pointing out mistakes as and when they were detected and correcting them was the spirit of democracy. Those who criticize the government for its mistakes should cooperate and work with it to rectify them. Instead of adopting such an attitude, if some try to magnify the mistakes and destabilize the government, they would not succeed.
That precisely is the reason for the dismal performance of the opposition parties in all the elections since the DMK came to power. The proof of pudding is in the eating. In a democracy, the proof of the bonafide intentions and conduct of a political party can be judged only by their acceptability for the people. In electoral politics, a ruling party and the opposition do not stand on even playing field; while the ruling party requires superlative accomplishments and constant contact with the masses to impress the voters, the opposition parties have the advantage of just criticizing and pulling up the government for its failures. That, despite the disadvantage, the DMK is on winning spree and the opposition parties find themselves in gloom, speak for the extra-ordinary achievements of the DMK government that are being experienced and felt by every section of the society in day to day life which make them keep reminded of the benefits; and in contrast the opposition parties frittering away the inherent electoral advantage by their recklessness thereby irritating the people.
For instance, take the main opposition party the ADMK and its supremo Jayalalitha. Instead of playing an active and constructive role as the Leader of the Opposition, she sojourns in the cool comforts of her Kodanad estate ‘palace’ for most of the days in a year inaccessible even to her party functionaries. Nevertheless there is no paucity of daily statements in her name – most of the issues she raises relate to local bodies, like drinking water supply, drainage, roads, street lights etc., for which a ward secretary or village secretary of her outfit can resort to action if at all the grievances were true. When occasionally she raises larger issues having statewide or countrywide ramifications, they invariably tend to be absurd or sheer figment of imagination or borrowed ad verbatim from the articles or news reports published in English dailies. The guiding principle of her politics and practices, as one can discern from her statements and actions ever since she entered public life, seems to be blindly opposing everything Kalaignar states and performs. Her words and deeds suggest that she is a fit case for a psychiatric therapy for perennial paranoia of Kalaignar.
Or else which sane person would state that the epidemic chikungunya was caused by children consuming eggs (supplied under Nutritious Meal Scheme) laid by chicken which are fed with PDS rice distributed at Rs.2 per kg (earlier and now at Re. One) and the elders get the disease infected from the milk drawn from cows which are given ration rice as cattle feed?  But Jayalalitha dared to issue such an idiotic statement and a dutiful media also published her statement without any discretion.
During her campaign for the 2006 Assembly elections, she alleged that Kalaignar was duping the people by promising to give free colour television sets, which she claimed was impossible to accomplish. But when an all-party committee was constituted and it decided on the tenders submitted and an announcement of distribution of CTVs was made in just over two months after the DMK government assumed office, Jayalalitha raised doubts on the quality of free TV sets. On the announcement regarding the selection of firms for supply of the TV sets, she wondered that given the price mentioned it was doubtful whether the sets would be of good quality. She said she was at a loss to understand why the DMK government chose to go in for national competitive bidding in the first phase and international open competitive bidding in the next phase. She also said there was no proper answer to the question as to how many persons would be given the colour TV sets. She asked how would the beneficiaries be able to view programmes (on different channels) and whether the government would pay for the cable connections.
Having initially ruling out the possibility of implementing the scheme, she had no qualms in raising all these questions once the distribution of CTVs started! It is the committee of legislators of all parties which opens the bids and decides on the tenders. Jayalalitha refused to nominate her party representative to the committee but she can verify the transparency and genuineness of the selection of firms from the representatives of her alliance parties in the committee. Later she also alleged that there were complaints of the free CTVs bursting under high voltage power. For all her doubts about the quality of the TV sets she can as well verify from her party cadre who have received them, over 90 lakh CTVs have been distributed so far and by March this year 1.3 crore sets would be distributed and by the month of December all ration card holders in the State would have received them. There are absolutely no complaints on the quality of the TV sets or grumblings over viewing programmes on different channels. Jayalalitha will do well visiting a slum in the city or any hamlet in the state and see for herself how people enjoy viewing the CTVs. It is for hurting the self-esteem of millions of people who eat Re. One a kg. rice by calling it as cattle feed and for casting aspersions in the free CTV scheme which they enjoy in their day to day life, that the people taught Jayalalitha lessons repeatedly in by-elections and in Lok Sabha election. But senseless, simple-minded and empty-headed Jayalalitha does not seem to be learning any lesson and keeps deceiving her simpleton folk and herself of an end to the DMK rule and her returning to power.
Jayalalitha once accused BJP leader L.K.Advani of suffering from ‘selective amnesia’. But now she is proving to be suffering from total amnesia or believing that the people of Tamil Nadu as a whole were suffering from that mental illness. Or else, having issued order banning recruitment in government services and recruiting nearly one lakh school teachers on contract basis on paltry consolidated pays, how does she dare to issue a statement alleging out of her imagination that the DMK government was contemplating to fill up all the ‘two lakh vacancies’ by recruiting retired government employees on contract basis. Kalaignar has given a fitting reply laying bare her folly.
Jayalalitha had been a staunch opponent of the struggle for Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka and was echoing the voice of Sri Lankan establishment publicly until January 17 last year while addressing a press meet. But within weeks, sensing electoral benefits in the Lok Sabha polls, she took the avtar of Eelam liberator and campaigned promising to ‘send Indian army’ and secure Tamil Eelam. But the people betrayed her expectation and once again punished her for her blatant, shameless and rudimentary opportunism.
Another perennial pessimist, who even while remaining in the DMK alliance and enjoying the fruits of power for his party, was constantly cutting at the roots of the spirit of alliance, is PMK founder-leader Dr. S.Ramadoss. Notwithstanding the extra-ordinary equanimity and courtesy extended by Kalaignar, Ramadoss everyday spoke in a derogatory manner which sought to ruin DMK’s self-respect. He made fun of and bitterly opposed all schemes and projects the DMK government implemented and sought publicity by giving an impression that the DMK government was against people. Unlike the indifferent  manner in which Jayalalitha treated him when he was in alliance with ADMK, Kalaignar patiently offered detailed explanations to every query and doubt raised by him everyday. The PMK leader cast aspersions on the much acclaimed Industrial policy of the DMK government calling it ‘inequitable and jobloss oriented’ and said there was no transparency in the selection of the implementing agency for the Kalaignar Insurance for Life Saving Treatments, whereas a transparent system was followed in which most of the insurance companies in the country, both in government and private sector participated and through this process the premium amount was fixed. Ramadoss tried to scuttle some farsighted projects like a satellite city near Chennai, Chennai airport expansion and a thermal power project in Cuddalore district.
One common feature among Jayalalitha, Ramadoss and actor-politician Vijayakanth is the intonation of audacity and arrogance in their speeches and statements, an anathema to democratic polity. Commenting on the two year performance of the DMK government, Ramadoss had the temerity to state that it had not passed the examination in any field. On the contrary the people of the State had given centum to the DMK in all the examinations (elections) it faced while giving a big ‘zero’ for Ramadoss’ party for its negative politics. People saw him as of ‘nuisance value’.
About the part-time politician Vijayakanth, the less said the better. Over 4 years of his foolhardy-filmy valour has brought him to the brink of extinction by his candidates losing deposits in by-elections. He is a paper-tiger, a making of the media. It is time he realized the lesson of thespian Sivaji Ganesan, who in 1989 was misled by the media-boosting, ventured to put up his candidates in all Assembly constituencies and facing a humiliating rout with himself coming third in his home-constituency Tiruvaiyaru. A senior journalist of an English daily then told him, ‘we (the media) will bring you to the centre of the road and leave you there; it is upto you to manage thereafter.’
About the communist parties, both CPI and CPM are accustomed to commit ‘historical blunders’ and admit it on later days in self-critical reviews. Their present positions can only be regretted. The likes of MDMK’s Vaiko do not merit consideration.
The attitude of destructive criticism, nay cynicism, of the leaders of the opposition parties in Tamil Nadu, had landed them in political quagmire. A seasoned democrat and statesman par excellence, Kalaignar is not exhilarated over the disarray of the opposition but is seriously and sincerely concerned of healthy democratic polity in Tamil Nadu and hence his dispassionate appeal on the New Year Day!                                             

(10-01-10)

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