By embracing alliance politics, muddying the lines between party and the government and cleverly utilising Sun TV, this veteran party keeps itself alive.
DMK stalwarts can take comfort in hearing that despite how grim things may seem today, this is not, in fact, the lowest point in the history of the DMK. The party reached its nadir in 1991, when, after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, it got walloped at the polls, winning a paltry two assembly seats while losing every single seat in Parliament. Incidentally, the party was also out of power from 1977 to 1989.
| SURVIVAL STRATEGIES |
| * The DMK is used to clawing its way back from political debacles |
| * In 1991, it had a miserable showing at the polls, winning only two assembly seats and no national ones. Since then, it has been in and out of power in Tamil Nadu |
| * In May this year, it lost the state to Jayalalithaa and has been relegated to becoming a bystander |
| * DMK’s success comes from its ability to utilise the Sun TV network as its ‘message machine’ |
| * It has made the state a good place to do business—Tamil Nadu has the highest number of highly successful SEZs |
| * The party battled cement companies to bring down prices during a shortage |
| * DMK's populist schemes—such as free medical care for people with annual income of Rs 72,000, or free televisions—has endeared it to the public |
| * It introduced a monthly stipend scheme for the unemployed to cover more than 2,00,000 registered beneficiaries across the state |
In other words, the DMK is a shrewd survivor. While its political fortunes look bleak at the moment, it has always been able to weather rough seas by employing several strategies—embracing alliance politics, blurring the lines between government and the party and employing sophisticated administrative tactics.
Consider the result of the last assembly elections. Yes, the DMK lost power and the people were angry over allegations of corruption. However, if you take a look at the numbers, there is an 8 per cent vote difference between the ADMK and the DMK-led alliance which went to Vijayakanth.
Explains Karti Chidambaram, a Congress activist and constituency manager for Union minister P Chidambaram: “Take the Sivaganga Lok Sabha constituency. When you add up all the six constituencies, the DMK-Congress alliance lost by 80,000 votes. But Vijayakanth took away 65,000. Viajayakanth was not part of our alliance, but he still fielded candidates. Divide the difference over six assembly constituencies and it works out to a very small number. So clearly the DMK-Congress vote is alive and kicking. Nor did the people vote against the performance of the government. It was a vote against corruption and the 2G spectrum scam. And the 2G spectrum scam is not going to be there in the next election”.
Tamil Nadu politics has always had a 6 to 8 per cent floating vote that represents the difference between victory and defeat for any alliance. No one has successfully been able to define the nature of this vote—but everyone says it’s there. Psephologists like Mahesh Rangarajan say it might be the disaffected, bitter, angry Brahmin vote, or it could be the middle castes. Either way, this set of people is capable of upsetting the election apple cart comprehensively.
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THE PARTY AND THE GOVERNMENT
The structure of the DMK has evolved in such a way over the years that it is hard to tell where the government stops and the party begins. This is most visible in the propaganda machinery of the party. Take the Sun TV Network, owned by Karunanidhi’s grand-nephew Kalanidhi Maran and his brother Dayanidhi. The network boasts of 20 channels that reach 95 million households in India. It also beams to 27 countries with a large south Indian diaspora, including the US, Canada, most of Europe, Singapore, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. It runs 45 FM radio stations, two daily newspapers with a combined daily circulation of 1.2 million, four magazines and SunDirect, the direct-to-home satellite TV service which has 5.5 million subscribers.
Sun TV controls over two-thirds of the cable market through its subsidiary Sumangali Cable Vision, and earns close to Rs 90 crore every month from subscribers. Sun Pictures, the movie arm of the Rs 1,000-crore Sun Network owned by the Maran brothers, has distributed over a dozen films since 2007 and recently landed Kollywood's biggest catch, Endhiran, starring Tamil superstar Rajinikanth and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.
Considering the DMK-Sun TV nexus, it is remarkably coincidental that, ahead of the elections earlier this year, the Tamil Nadu government launched the free TV scheme supposedly “in order to provide entertainment to women and to enable them to acquire General Knowledge for the Social and Economical development of the State,” a release by the state government said.” Under this scheme, “all the households in Tamil Nadu who do not have colour TV sets would be provided with a free 14-inch colour television set from State funds. It is envisaged that around 7.5 million families would be benefited from this scheme”.
In other words, the main question here is if the government in fact provided the television, and Sun TV network, the message. The Supreme Court is currently deciding as to whether this is legal or not. “Poll promises are unconstitutional and bribery, amounting to corrupt practice under the Representation of the People Act," Chennai-based advocate SS Balaji, who has filed a case in the Supreme Court, said. "The government cannot enrich private individuals out of consolidated funds. The government cannot create a private asset out of public funds. Giving free CTVs or other items is precisely that," he said.
The state government’s policies have benefitted the party in other ways, allege the DMK’s critics.. The state government’s health insurance scheme called the Kalaignar Insurance Scheme, (named after the Chief Minister) envisaged offering medical services free of cost to persons with annual income of Rs 72,000. Launched in 2008, the insurance scheme sold out.
But, on 21 July this year, when Jayalalithaa came to power, she said that through the scheme, an estimated Rs 2,000 crore of state funds had been siphoned off over four years. “With the same money, 20 medical colleges with state-of-the-art general hospitals could have been set up in 20 districts,” she said. Jayalalithaa said the connection between Karunanidhi and the ETA group, the promoter of the scheme's insurer Star Health and Allied Insurance Company, should be probed.
V Jagannathan, CMD, Star Health and Allied Insurance Company, told reporters: “We are only an insurer. We will do what the insured wants us to do. The existing policy is addressing surgery-related issues and the new government wants to improve it further.” A retired High Court judge has been appointed to look at misappropriation in the scheme.
GOOD GOVERNANCE
But no government can survive through patronage and cronyism alone. The DMK cannot be written off also because it got several things right. Of the total foreign direct investment (FDI) that flowed into India in 2006, over 9 per cent went to Tamil Nadu. It is one of the states with the highest number of highly successful Special Economic Zones (SEZs). But despite left-of-centre rhetoric, the DMK has seen no agitation against SEZs during its tenure.
At the height of a cement shortage last year, Karunanidhi threatened to nationalise cement units if they didn’t bring down prices. Industry scurried to comply. Construction labour that was facing a livelihood problem because of the vagaries of cement production and distribution, and those seeking to construct homes between 500 square feet and 1,000 square feet at a cost varying between Rs 500,000 and Rs 1,000,000 were the main beneficiaries. Cement suppliers denied that they were victims of political arm-twisting: the surest indication that judicious pressure may have been applied, but no one was complaining.
A monthly stipend scheme for the unemployed to cover more than 2,00,000 registered beneficiaries across the state turned the unemployed into fans of the DMK. Yes, the state government was unable to intervene in the power shortage scenario. But Karunanidhi’s finger was so firmly on the pulse of the people that he could divine exactly what they wanted.
In the ten years that the DMK government was in power, it managed to put in place systems and organise the party in every nook and cranny of the state. True, younger people might not be joining the DMK but it is still the second largest party in the state. “There is a 12 percentage point difference in the vote percentage of the second and third party in the state. That tells its own story” Chidambaram says.
The fact is, no one knows what will happen three years from now. The element of threat in this SWOT analysis is the intervention of divine forces and disputes in the division of spoils in the ruling family. But till that happens, DMK is secure—it sits in the opposition now but it could easily come back to power in the future.