Absence of a successor to Jayalalithaa is worrying

The chief minister was rushed to Apollo Hospitals in the middle of the night. As what was expected to be an overnight stay became significantly longer, cryptic press releases which sparked more questions than answers were issued. Medical experts were being flown in for opinions, and the press was shut out. People had begun to read between the lines, and make up new ones. Devotees of AIADMK supremo Jayalalithaa, who had made history by being elected to a second consecutive term, were killing themselves from depression. A chief minister made so popular by film stardom that people had forgotten this was their leader's adopted state was in the midst of a medical crisis. As the clamour for answers and an interim leader began, the governor was in a dilemma. Pujas were being performed and ministers and political heads flew in from Delhi; even Karunanidhi broke tradition and wished his arch enemy a full recovery.

That was 1984. The hospitalisation of then-chief minister MG Ramachandran (MGR) is being eerily re-enacted 32 years later. The hospital, the party, and various others have appealed to the media not to draw comparisons, but the parallels are impossible to ignore.

However, more troubling than the similarities are the differences-first, the leaks from sources have not been plugged, but editors appear to have chosen to gag their reporters for fear of repercussions; second, Jayalalithaa had access to excellent medical care in her home, which is itself minutes away from the hospital, and the areas of expertise of the specialists being called in to monitor her case make the situation ominous; third, unlike MGR-whose illness set off a struggle for party control between his protégés R M Veerappan and Jayalalithaa herself-the current chief minister of Tamil Nadu has no political heir.

The reporters who have been stationed in shifts at Apollo Hospitals since September 23, when news of Jayalalithaa having been admitted broke, are a frustrated lot-while sources whisper frightening updates off the record, no one is willing to be quoted even anonymously. More than forty people have been arrested for spreading rumours, and a Public Interest Litigation filed in the Madras High Court seeking information on Jayalalithaa's health was unsuccessful. The sections of the newspapers reserved for reports on the chief minister are being filled with soft stories about MGR impersonators camping outside the hospital, differently-abled supporters of Jayalalithaa making long treks from faraway villages to hold vigil, and auto drivers offering free rides to patients.

All hopes have been pinned on an astrologer who claims Jayalalithaa will come out of hospital unscathed and will remain healthy until 2019, at which time he has predicted another bout of illness. This is Jayalalithaa's third health scare in recent times. The cause for her hospitalisation has been upgraded from 'fever and dehydration' to 'infection'. Vague press releases use cloaked phrases like "passive physiotherapy" and "respiratory support", terms which cover a range of treatments. Uncomfortable questions need to be addressed. The doctors have said Jayalalithaa will be in hospital for a while longer. Any patient who is discharged after weeks or months in hospital needs a period of recuperation. When the patient is the chief minister of a state, someone needs to hold the reins in her absence.

The problem is that there is no real deputy. Jayalalithaa was a welcome relief from political dynasties. Whatever she did when she was in power, one knew that the decisions were made by her. All control rested with her. Her one-time best friend and close associate Sasikala Natarajan, whose family - known as the Mannargudi clan - was once believed to be Jayalalithaa's one weakness, has been falling in and out of favour over the last few years. Jayalalithaa's true aides are so discreet that their identities are only hypothesised. One of them is her adviser Sheela Balakrishnan, who along with chief secretary Rama Mohana Rao, is believed to be running the administration in Jayalalithaa's absence. But she is a bureaucrat who, for most of her career, managed to stay politically neutral.

Unlike Annadurai, MGR, and Karunanidhi, Jayalalithaa has not groomed any political heirs. All these former chief ministers ensured their legacy would continue by fostering deputies several decades younger than they, with charisma that could equal or even challenge theirs.When Jayalalithaa first came to power, she was in her early forties, with little need to think of her legacy. She is pushing seventy now. The reason she came back to power despite the devastation the Chennai floods left in their wake towards the end of her last term was that the 2011-16 period had been a golden one for the state, marred only by the floods. A stringent regime of power cuts early in her rule had ensured that the deficit was wiped out. The subsidies for the Below Poverty Line population, from mineral water to canteens to plans for cinema halls, all carrying the Amma brand, have been hugely successful.

News reports about the increasing debt of the state are carried every now and again, but voters will not believe the coffers of the state are in bad health for as long as they are being given financial benefits. The game of thrones over the last three decades had been frustrating not only for politicians but for the public - as the DMK and AIADMK regimes pushed each other out of power, we knew the first couple of years of any government's rule would be spent undoing the schemes of the previous one. For the first time, this was set to change.

After its defeat in this election, the DMK's chances of returning to power in the near future had been written off. The other parties had put up such miserable shows that even memes featuring their leaders petered out. Jayalalithaa was the undisputed queen of Tamil Nadu, and would be for a while to come. If the state burns, there is no one to put the fires out.