With Jaya Gone, TN Politics Will Become Multi-Polar, More Like UP Or Bihar

It would be a cliché to say that Tamil Nadu politics will never be the same again after the passing of J Jayalalithaa around midnight on 5 December, but it would be closest to the truth. With her gone, the state’s politics will splinter, losing its main anchor. Tamil Nadu may, in future, resemble the politics of Uttar Pradesh or Bihar, where thin popular vote majorities may determine winners. Coalitions of castes will be the norm.

Tamil Nadu has seen bipolar politics since 1977, when MG Ramachandran split with the DMK and formed a government under the banner of AIADMK. The split occurred less than 10 years after the DMK thrashed the Congress party at the hustings in 1967. Since then, Tamil Nadu has been voting one Dravidian party or the other. The two parties have ruled in alternation, with only Jaya breaking the jinx in this year’s assembly elections by beating anti-incumbency and retaining power.

However, the shift away from bipolarity predated Jayalalithaa’s passing: in 2006, for the first time ever, the DMK returned to power without a full majority. It ruled as a minority government, with outside support from the Congress. Its stability was guaranteed by the fact that the UPA needed DMK support – and we know where that led, to the 2G scam.

Put simply, post-2006, the DMK lost its ability to gain a majority on its own, and that left Jaya’s AIADMK as the primary pole of Tamil Nadu politics. With her departure, Tamil Nadu politics will become multi-polar.

With Jaya’s arch-rival, M Karunanidhi, also in poor health, the DMK itself could face splits with the nonagenarian’s other son, M Azhagiri, biding his time to break away and launch a rival to the heir-apparent, MK Stalin.

In the AIADMK, which was an alliance led by two major castes – the Thevars and Gounders, apart from various smaller castes – the exit of Jaya will sooner than later lead to a split, with the late Chief Minister’s long-term friend Sasikala Natarajan, a Thevar, unlikely to be a force for unity. Nor is O Panneerselvam, the new Chief Minister, likely to provide the glue to hold the party together. He was trusted by Jaya, but his own wider political acceptability will be in question.

The future of Tamil politics will thus be a loose alliance of caste-based parties, and governments will be determined largely by the arithmetic of caste.

Will the national parties now get a look-in, now that regional parties are splintering?

It is a possibility, but they must be rooted in some of the bigger castes, and opt to create rainbow coalitions. Neither the BJP, which is seen as a northern party, nor the Congress, can be anything more than a small player in Tamil Nadu in the foreseeable future. The only way out for either of them is to get a charismatic leader for the long-term, and build a base. That is unlikely to happen anytime soon, for even the Congress has split several times.

It is open season in Tamil Nadu politics.