What BJP's strategy to win in Tamil Nadu looks like
On May 8, a photograph of a beaming Tamil Nadu electricity minister P Thangamani with Prime Minister Narendra Modi was released. It came soon after the power ministers conference in New Delhi but what's significant is that Thangamani belongs to the Edappadi Palaniswami camp of the AIADMK that has been at loggerheads with the O Panneerselvam faction for three months now.
The perception on the ground is that the BJP is backing Panneerselvam and supports his bid to purge the AIADMK of the Sasikala family. That the PM, with his busy schedule, should take out the time to meet a state minister, that too of a non-NDA ruled state, is bound to raise eyebrows. It only lends credence to the suspicion that the BJP central leadership has been doing some amount of backseat driving as far as affairs of the AIADMK are concerned and is talking to both camps.
The BJP sees the present political crisis in Tamil Nadu as its best opportunity to get more than a foothold in the state. At present, it has one MP in Pon Radhakrishnan and no MLA in Tamil Nadu. With a weakened AIADMK, due to infighting, no strong leader and the Damocles sword of corruption charges against many top guns of the ruling camp, the BJP can get its way, punching above its political weight in Tamil Nadu.
It would ideally like to ally with a Panneerselvam-led combined AIADMK in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and hope to reap a rich harvest of seats to offset the losses it may suffer in north Indian states like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Gujarat where it peaked in 2014.
But will the BJP find easy acceptability in both urban and rural Tamil Nadu?
It won't be easy given that in the countryside and the Cauvery delta in particular, the BJP is perceived as a pro-Karnataka party that did nothing to help Tamil Nadu in this hour of crisis. The state is facing the worst drought in 140 years, partly due to the failed northeast monsoon last year and the reluctance on Karnataka's part to release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu.
Though Tamil Nadu farmers understand that there isn't sufficient water even in Karnataka, they feel the BJP did not try to argue for Tamil Nadu that it should receive a proportionate share of the Cauvery water that is available. They attribute political reasons for it saying the BJP wants to come to power in Karnataka in 2018 and so does not see any merit in fighting for Tamil Nadu.
What's worse, even though the Tamil Nadu farmers did everything in the protest manual to attract the PM's attention to meet him with their list of demands in Delhi, they did not succeed. Their protest lasted 41 days and no senior-level Union minister met him to tell them the NDA government will take care of them. To add to it, social media activists went on an overdrive attributing motives to the protesters, accusing them of an anti-BJP agenda in continuing with the protest. All this has created a negative impression about the BJP among the agrarian community.
Even during the Jallikattu agitation in January, the BJP did not come out of it smelling of roses. Though it helped the AIADMK government frame the legislation and got it cleared, the impression on the ground was that the BJP as the ruling party at the Centre could have got it done much earlier without making the youth get into protest mode.
The NDA government's failure to appoint a full-time governor also figures in the list of woes. Vidyasagar Rao, who is governor of Maharashtra, holds additional charge of Chennai Raj Bhavan and spends most of his time in Mumbai. The Modi regime has persisted with the acting governor since September 2016, giving the impression that it does not care much about Tamil Nadu, even when politically the government is precariously balanced.
The language change on milestones on the highways has also become a sore point. The grouse is not so much over the painting of locations in Hindi but most feel it was done in a manner that reeked of insensitivity. Tamil Nadu has had a history of anti-Hindi agitation and the BJP was expected to bear that in mind. The DMK has used this to mount an attack on the BJP, accusing it of misusing central agencies to make the AIADMK dance to its tunes.
Another drawback for the BJP is the lack of a tall leader with pan-Tamil Nadu acceptability. It tried its best to rope in Rajinikanth but the superstar has been reluctant to take the political plunge. With no big names, the BJP has found it tough to erase its image of a cow belt and a Hindi heartland party. Its party president Tamilisai Soundrajan is seen more as a television soundbite warrior while national secretary H Raja is an active Twitter warrior.
Despite all the negatives, riding on the AIADMK and making use of its considerable cadre base looks like the best bet for the BJP to make inroads into Tamil Nadu. The fact that MK Stalin of the DMK is attacking the party is an indication that Modi and Amit Shah have chosen the best available political option.