CHENNAI: Running a political party for more than a decade is a Herculean task in the country. But, actor-turned-politician R Sarathkumar has been leading a party for the last 12 years, albeit with minimum success. And he is making efforts to nurture local leaders with political awareness.
Sarathkumar was the only actor who raised his voice against J Jayalalithaa, when she was Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu during 1995, even if he had only a handful of films. Later, he made an intensive campaign across the state to defeat the AIADMK and won his goal.
Later, he became a Rajya Sabha member on the DMK ticket in 2001. Subsequently, for some political reasons, he resigned his MP post and joined the AIADMK. After a small stint with the party he quit it and floated the All India Samaththuva Makkal Katchi (AISMK) in 2007 which won two seats in the 2011 Assembly elections.
Sarathkumar spoke a lot in a free-wheeling chat with The New Indian Express.
At a time when he was celebrating his party’s 12th anniversary, he dwelt at length on his 23 years’ political experience.
Here are some excerpts from the interview:
What have you learnt from the last 23 years of your political experience and from the 12 years as founder-president of your own party?
During the last 12 years as founder-president, I have learnt a lot from the public as the public are always keenly watching the political developments of the state. Our people have more political awareness than other states in the country.
But, many say your party is functioning towards the welfare of a single community?
You see, basically, our party name is All India Samaththuva Makkal Katchi which means all are equal. And I never show interest to know one’s caste even in my fans’ club. You can verify this with our party leaders and cadre. In our party, we have 117 district units and secretaries for the units. I don’t know about their castes. Only I came to know about some of their castes when we are making efforts to identify candidates for reserved constituencies. And we never encourage any person in our party, who is working with their caste identity.
So, I don’t want to lead my political journey with any particular caste shadow and I am always working for the welfare of the state without any caste and religious barriers.
Do you have any plan to bring the young generation into politics?
I am speaking at five to six educational institutions in a month. There I am elaborating the need for political awareness and the importance of voting. And I have spoken about the importance of democracy among the students as they are our next generation. And we have identified around 150 candidates for various Assembly segments and 27 candidates for various parliamentary segments in the state since nurturing a local leader is as important as developing the party. The local leaders would be the inspiration for next-generation voters.
What are your plans to develop your party in such a way that it becomes the ruling party in the state?
Among various leaders in the state, only I have the parliamentary and Assembly experience and I know very well about the functioning nature of Delhi and Chennai. We are in the belief that only by identifying local leaders we can develop the party. Hence, we have made efforts to nurture local leaders across the state and bring in a younger generation into politics to serve the public.
In order to implement micromanagement in our party affairs, we have divided the party into 117 district units and have appointed the secretaries for the units. And every district secretary can take care of two Assembly segments. Besides, we have identified 150 candidates for the Assembly segments across the state. By nurturing them as influential ground-level leaders we hope that we can capture power in the state at the earliest.
What is the need to identify such a huge number of candidates before reaching any seat-sharing agreement with any allied party?
Many small parties would start searching for their candidates after completing seat-sharing. But, we have identified the candidates for working in a constructive manner. And we have identified the candidates based on their political awareness and interest in public works.
Our candidates are intensively working for getting local issues addressed by approaching government departments and they are getting details about the requirements and demands of the public in the respective Assembly segments. And they are exploring the possibilities about remedies to the grievances. And they will become role models in public service if elected by the people as we are giving them such a ground-level training. And all of them are going to be introduced at a public meeting on November 16. The venue will be decided later.