Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs
Related Articles
Dravidian politics must re-invent every aspect of itself: its modes of operation, its emotional motifs, and its leadership
Tamil Nadu at different points in history has been considered the bane of Indian politics as much as it has been the enlightened torch-bearer of progressive reform. Today, the foundation of its political superstructure is facing tectonic shifts and an entirely new paradigm may be on the horizon. In the heyday of the Dravidian movement, Tamil Nadu was one of those rare States that issued the clarion call of secession and autonomy for the Tamil people, ethnic-based demands that would, in today’s India, be instantly branded “anti-national”. Toward the turn of the century, one of its leaders brought down a coalition government at the Centre by suddenly pulling the plug on an alliance agreement. It has always been a State that has shown resistance to certain diktats from New Delhi, from the micro concerns about Hindi imposition in the State to macro disputes over inter-State river-water sharing arrangements. Notwithstanding the frictions generated by Tamil Nadu’s posturing on all these contentious issues, it has simultaneously been the vanguard among its peers in the provision of mass welfare goods and services. There are some who argue that the antidote to this crisis of runaway corruption could be the kind of “good governance” reforms that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has introduced at a national level, including a purported crackdown on bureaucratic inefficiency, the Goods and Services Tax, and macroeconomic shock-therapy policies such as demonetisation. Simultaneously, there has been speculation on whether, in its bid to saffronise the politics of every Indian State, the Bharatiya Janata Party is desperate to get a backdoor entry into Tamil Nadu through an informal partnership with the AIADMK. Yet such expectations are built on heroic assumptions and reveal ignorance of Tamils’ historical voting preferences. It is true that Dravidianism no longer exists in its prior radical form, which implies that since the 1990s it has shed its anti-Brahmin, anti-Hindu, anti-Hindi, anti-Delhi rhetoric in favour of a broad, inclusive strand of political accommodationism for all Tamils. Yet there is a residual feeling of Tamil exceptionalism among the voter demographic, which motivates their behaviour at the polls and continues to present an opportunity to politically mobilise. Thus, notwithstanding the gradual creep of saffron politics in Tamil Nadu — notable here are rising incidents of communal clashes, generally a rarity in the State — the hegemonic influence of regional parties, which began in 1967, abides. The reasons for this are three-fold. First, half a century of mass welfare policies have left an indelible footprint on the electorate, which positions the Dravidian parties favourably as benevolent populists relative to a distant, alien, “north Indian” BJP or Congress. Second, the genius of Annadurai, Karunanidhi, and AIADMK founder M.G. Ramachandran was to supplant the elites-driven fund-raising and campaigning networks of the Congress with grassroots, cadre-based networks of their own, a model that has now acquired deep roots and cannot be easily out-manoeuvred. Third, it may be difficult for the likes of the BJP to breach the ramparts of Tamil politics because the people do not fret as much about high-level macro corruption as they do about the transactions cost of individualised micro corruption, which impacts their day-to-day existence. Mr. Modi’s utopian promise of delivering a hyper-efficient, digital-savvy vision of Indian institutions implies a reform that ostensibly targets the first kind of corruption. Since Tamils are well accustomed to rule by elite robber-barons, Mr. Modi’s vision may be no more to them than an abstract construct. Nevertheless, in the broadest arc of history, it would be hard to deny that Dravidian politics has reached a tipping point at the current juncture. It must re-invent every aspect of itself — its modes of operation, its emotional motifs, and its crop of leadership — if it is to survive as the champion of Tamils in the coming decades.
Source : https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/adrift-on-stormy-seas/article25385069.ece
