At 68 years of age, J Jayalalithaa should have been in the prime of her political career. In the Indian landscape—where there’s hardly a concept of retirement (vanaprastha being largely a matter restricted to the scriptures)—it’s the age when politicians usually come into their own. Whether it was P V Narashima Rao, I K Gujral, A B Vajpayee or a Manmohan Singh for that matter, they matured in politics, assumed bigger roles, shaped the fate and future of the nation, all in their vintage years.
It is perhaps this sense of untimeliness that made Jayalalithaa’s death a cause of national mourning that took the scale of a watershed event. When a politician from Arunachal Pradesh tweeted condolences and an Uttarakhand Assembly offered tributes, it was as if one of their own had departed. It was said that she has left a void and a Maya and a Mamata behind. If not in her life, in death Jayalalithaa transcended regional barriers.
Even if she did not have a political career outside, there was something else that did travel. A certain signature politics invented in Tamil Nadu, a whole style of how to run a welfare state, of which she was the legatee. Unlike Mamata Banerjee and Mayawati, Jayalalithaa had a sense of humour. This aspect of her persona, of course, was seen only by those who got close enough to converse. (The public only saw the beatific, mesmerising smile, or the sterner aspects of physiognomy or political action.) Not so long ago, Jayalalithaa told a few Left leaders while chatting about the role of her Amma schemes, “Now, I sometimes forget my real name...”.
For the legions who poured their grief onto the streets of Chennai, who walked with her body on its last journey like disciplined soldiers, she was ‘Amma’. Not Jayalalithaa. Not merely a political leader or a chief minister. Not a matinee idol. They were mourners of a death of a relationship. And a certain kind of political imagination. Through her death, Jayalalithaa seems to have emerged as some of sort of a Mother Teresa of Indian politics. Looking at the thronging masses, the adjective ‘iconic’ did not seem misplaced or exaggerated.
She had given her people, and the visual news media covering her funeral, the last blockbuster of her life. Even iconoclasts praised and grudgingly acknowledged her unique legacy. Laid to rest next to MGR and not far from Annadurai, she was in same row with them— accorded the stature of her mentor and the originator of Dravidian politics. Yes, in the same row in a very specific sense. For, what she retained of the political legacy she inherited in toto is not so much Dravidian identity politics, or atheism, but crucially, social welfare.
A model of official state benevolence that was always frowned upon by the middle class and economic savants, it made life easier for the vast millions. If what she added to the political legacy was a touch of fierce loyalty and discipline— the two crore cadre of the party had to mirror the utmost loyalty she too showed to her mentor—it came not merely from the authoritarian air of her initial years. What was on display in the quiet lines at the funeral was grief at a genuine bereavement. A transmuted gratitude. For, to become a true legatee of Anna and MGR, she had to also become Amma—a bestower of good(s), salt to silicon, cradle to grave, like some unipolar political conglomerate.
Her film background was transcended through this fine-tuning of welfarism— the direct people-oriented politics of Anna and MGR. Policy was not an abstract thing for them, a working of the infrastructural levers that would produce good in the end. It was an immediate, direct transaction. The free mid-day meal schemes that go all the way back to the early Dravidian party chief ministers is now a policy across India. Anna’s rice schemes were replicated by N T Rama Rao, the former chief minister of Andhra Pradesh. The rice recipe lived on through various avatars, most recently with the BJP’s man for Chhattisgarh, ‘Chawal Baba’ Raman Singh. Nitish Kumar, Akhilesh Yadav, Mamata… they have all prospered in going down the same track.
So has more than one Central government found uses for the NREGA (which similarly raises sceptical notes from a certain crowd). So what Jayalalithaa leaves behind as a serious political legacy—a permanent challenge to the antisubsidy pro-marketeers—is a simple message, ‘secured development’. A record that shows that economics does better with a dash of socialism. It works better when honed with what is often derided as ‘populism’. Jayalalithaa took this to the level of a high art. The Tamil Nadu she has left behind is a better governed state with indices outstripping the national average, because she allied economics with reservations in education and spending big in social security (freebies included).
It increased the catchment area of the state, produced a healthier, skilled and more employable population. Despite the Rs 25,000 crore food subsidy, Rs 3,016 crore maternity benefits, Rs 2,852 crore health insurance, Rs 6,281 crore transport subsidy, Rs 5,941 crore solar power scheme, Rs 3,500 crore power/agriculture subsidy, and another estimated Rs 23,000 crore in material doles, Tamil Nadu’s GDP grew faster than the rest of India’s, with a rather enviable per capita income. This should silence everyone into awe and convince young Akhilesh to follow her footsteps religiously (he has confided in a close aide that he wants emulate Amma). A former IPS officer who knew Jayalalithaa says, “Amma was Anna+MGR’’. At Poes Garden, a prime minister and the guards accompanying the VVIP would be served the same tea and snacks... an apt last note for someone who represented a combination of beauty, brains and compassion. Unless you got on her wrong side.
Santwana Bhattacharya
is Political Editor, The New Indian Express Email: santwana@newindianexpress.com