Aditi Phadnis: The master of the coalition game

BACKSTAGE

M Karunanidhi

At the core group meeting of the Congress held last Friday to discuss disinvestment and its fallout, it was decided that the festering boil that disinvestment of Neyveli Lignites Corporation (NLC) was, burst because of the pressure generated by the ganging up of the Left parties and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). Congress leaders went home after that meeting sanguine that once this link was broken, it would be easier to control the DMK.

But is this a correct reading of the situation in Tamil Nadu? According to specialists in Tamil politics, even as we speak, the Left parties are considering ingenious ways of keeping their political options open because they know the unfailing rule of Tamil Nadu politics "" that whoever is in the Opposition must come to power in the state.

Chief minister and chief DMK ideologue Muthuvel Karunanidhi has proved in the space of one week what a master of coalition politics he is and has acted to check precisely this. Not only has he ensured fellow ally Pattali Makkal Katchi leader A Ramadoss is made to have his way in the AIIMS/Venugopal controversy, thus making a caste point along the way; but he has also brought the UPA alliance at the Centre to its knees, while establishing he is more Left than the Left when it comes to the interests of workers.

It is quite another matter that the DMK had no policy on disinvestment of NLC "" and in the first week of July, Karunanidhi had himself made a statement that if disinvestment of NLC was inevitable, the workers should be given a share. This is what the Centre did. The problem was all the unions ganged up on the NLC issue seeing the opportunity to prove their autonomy and send the message that it was the parties that were irrelevant, while unions were at the forefront of the workers' struggle.

This seriously rattled Karunanidhi. Naming your son Stalin after an icon of the proletarian revolution is one thing. Making sure Left parties (who have between them 19 seats in the Tamil Nadu Assembly) don't drift away is another. The Left parties know they can never form a government in Tamil Nadu. The next best is to back the party that can. The next time around, the AIDMK is likely to form the government. Before that, the DMK is making sure they don't flee the pen and if they do, making sure they are suitably discredited.

All this could have been averted if the Congress general secretary-in-charge Veerappa Moily, had kept the government informed about the DMK's state of mind. Instead, the Congress has trained its guns on Finance Minister P Chidambaram who is only the piano player in this context.