Commentary/Saisuresh Sivaswamy

Fear of losing OBC votes made Karunanidhi back Laloo

As a rule politicians are unstable, but Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi would put the sphinx to shame over his feelings of camaraderie for his Bihari counterpart Laloo Prasad Yadav. He realised late his open contradiction of last week's United Front announcement about the future of Yadav and his newborn outfit, has sent ructions among not only the constituents of the Front, but among a wider audience as well.

Actually, the UF by now ought to have got accustomed to the frequent jolts that comes its way; sympathise, rather, with those who seek a more placid life than what our politicians have been allowing since March 30.

For a little more than a week, then, it has been the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam's turn to tell Prime Minister I K Gujral how to run his government. Nor has Karunanidhi hesitated in indulging in a little eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with the Left Front, and today appears to have been stared down enough to talk of compromise.

I have said this before and I repeat myself, Karunanidhi's defence of Yadav is an extension of V P Singh's line of taught corruption in which the anti-Bofors crusader has downgraded corruption to being of secondary importance to, say, social justice.

The Left Front, described by Singh long ago as his natural allies, have not hesitated in seeing through the speciousness of this argument. Any political party that openly condones corruption faces the death-knell at the hustings, for this is one issue that cuts across caste and religious lines -- we have seen this being demonstrated in the elections. In fact, if it were not for the perception that the Jayalalitha government was steeped in corruption, Karunanidhi's dream of reoccupying Fort St George would have remained just that, a pipe dream. One suspects that this fact was brought home to him quite forcefully over the last two days, possibly making him look around for an honourable exit.

But why did Karunanidhi chose to rock the boat at this juncture? One reason could be the realignment of forces in Tamil Nadu. In fact, the coming together of his bugbear Jayalalitha with every politicians's bugbear, Subramanian Swamy, at a time when the public regard for his government is slipping, is a cause for worry. A jolt to the United Front tells his voters that he too counts for something in New Delhi, and that his Telugu counterpart N Chandrababu Naidu is not the only king-maker.

To be fair to Karunanidhi, his government is also active on other, more populist fronts to address the seeping dissatisfaction. The autorickshaw mafia, for one, which was no doubt emboldened by superstar and native king-maker Rajnikant's endorsement of them in his films, has been brought to heel. The water shortage, a recurring nightmare, is not so acute this year, thanks to new schemes bearing well water.

But class consciousness surmounts all. If Laloo, a founding pillar of the United Front establishment were to go away, the chances are that a chunk of the OBC votes would go with him. More than the Congress gaining by this development -- not a wholly unwelcome possibility in the Front's eyes -- is the fear that the BJP will capitalise on this which has prompted one OBC to defend the other.

And how could he expect the Left Front, which ostensibly does not believe in the caste system, to appreciate his concern? With this miscalculation, it is not Karunanidhi, but V P Singh who has stumbled badly.

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