The DMK is suddenly looking a bit lost. No matter how valiant the effort to keep trudging in the electoral arena in Tamil Nadu, the non-availability of M Karunanidhi in the campaign has thrown up a vacuum everyone pretends does not exist.
In a strict sense there is no vacuum. He remains chief minister and is the head of the party. A surgery to correct a spinal problem has confined the DMK patriarch to a wheelchair. His desire to go around the state campaigning for the alliance he leads, even in that condition, was thwarted by another bout of illness that has made it impossible for him to move out. As of now, it appears that all plans for his tour have been abandoned and he may be left with the device he has always used to communicate with his cadre and the people of the state: his writings in a newspaper.
The DMK also controls at least a couple of television channels that can be used effectively within the bounds set by the election commission. Even with all this the party will still find it difficult to come up with a performance like last time if its star campaigner is not sufficiently visible in public. And a campaign without him in the vanguard is hard to imagine. Certainly unheard of in Tamil Nadu since 1967 when the DMK defeated the Congress under the leadership of Annadurai.
Karunanidhi and MGR were star campaigners of the party even then. Since then, he has won spectacular victories and lost miserably but that did not make a whit of a difference to his leadership. Not even when the party split and MGR chose his own path.
Though he has made an effort in the last few years to develop a second line of leadership, largely from his own family, the party has always looked up to him. His illness has thrust the job of campaigning on his children but by all accounts it is not the same. The DMK’s campaign so far is an anaemic version of what it used to be in the past.
It is, therefore, not at all surprising that the AIADMK-led front is increasingly looking like a winner and has, according to some accounts, opened communication channels with the Congress. Advani himself had claimed that he had sent emissaries to Jayalalithaa for a post-poll tie up but she had, certainly at that point, ruled out any truck with the BJP.
Whatever may be the outcome, there is a lesson from the DMK’s experience. No matter how strong and extensive the cadre base of a party is, it is important to develop second and even third tiers of leadership. The DMK certainly has a band of leaders but still these leaders are no match for Karunanidhi. That might compel him to strike out again, disregarding his health condition. For him, like many of his generation including HD Deve Gowda, it might possibly be the last electoral battle.
The writer is DNA’s political consultant
