Confident Jayalalithaa can change national mood

 

In an extraordinary gesture, more than 2,000 people tonsured their heads in just one southern district of Tamil Nadu as thanksgiving for the verdict in the Karnataka high court that paved the way for her return. Her bonds with the people can engender such fierce loyalty. As a phenomenon, this may not be confined to Tamil Nadu, except that the ties here are more like fealty and far stronger than may be the case elsewhere in the country. 

 

In the eight-month period between September 2014 and this week, governance was hesitant and decision making slow. That should change soon enough. Jayalalithaa’s return may also echo beyond the state as the ruling dispensation at the Centre might relish her support at an awkward time when a couple of landmark bills like the land bill and the GST bill are in Parliament. 

 

To have a strong regional leader lending moral support now would be welcomed by the BJP regardless of the actual stand that Tamil Nadu might take on the given issues. The numbers in the Lok Sabha might not matter so much to the ruling alliance, but the AIAADMK, with 37 MPs making them the third largest contingent after the BJP and the Congress, has a voluble presence there.   

 

The indications are that an exonerated Jayalalithaa would be a valuable ally for the national party if they choose to pursue that line of thinking. With elections less than a year away now that the AIADMK may be inclined to rule over the full five-year term, it is bound to be a busy time for the party leader whose presence at the polls where the popular vote counts is so formidable as to defy all the unifying efforts that her opposition is using to cobble up a grand alliance against her, despite the inherent contradictions of the different parties.

 

No pundits or soothsayers are needed to forecast the popular vote, which is very much in favour of Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK and her exoneration by the judiciary would have helped clear up the doubt s that were cropping up when she kept to her Poes Garden residence for so long, but only in deference to the diktat of the Supreme Court. Her deportment in the last eight months has been exemplary as opposed to say Laloo Prasad Yadav who indulged in all kinds of political manoeuvring.

 

The welfare state with a distinct safety net for the poorest of the poor that Tamil Nadu has become in the last several years is owed even more to Jayalalithaa’s welfare measures.  They have gone beyond mere ‘freebies’, as evidenced in the popularity of the Amma canteens whose patronage may pick up now that she is bound to take a direct interest in seeing to it that the old standards are reestablished in the popular eateries. 

 

What the crystal ball may show in the year to come is a greater than state role for Jayalalithaa as she returns triumphantly as an exonerated person to the gaddi. Her self confidence when at the helm is certain to widen her national perspective and also end all the uncertainty plus put a full stop to the spate of suicides that rocked the state when she was away from Fort St George.