DMK’s outreach revives hope for another front

Senior Journalist

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin spent three days in New Delhi and inaugurated a new party office in the national capital. Although Tamil Nadu is one of the best performing states on parameters ranging from industrialisation to social justice and welfarism, its leaders rarely assert themselves on the national stage. That MK Stalin chose to do it now is of great significance.

First, it is obviously an assertion of federalism and Tamil Nadu with its distinct politics and welfare models feels a need to do so at the current inflection point in national politics. Beyond the conceptual idea of federal constitutional norms and state autonomy, there are some very real problems that have cropped up and given a sense of urgency to the need to rally Opposition-ruled states against the centralisation push of the Narendra Modi government.

There is both a pragmatic and an ideological component to the DMK moves. First, the GST regime has resulted in the states losing revenue-raising streams, the Inter-State Council has not met for the past few years even as southern states have been flagging the issue of distribution of tax revenue in the Finance Commission. They are concerned about collecting more taxes and bringing down their populations, even though the next delimitation exercise that will happen after 2026 would reflect changes in population and increase the number of Parliament seats for states that continue to have a sharp population increase. By implication, the southern states point out, taxes collected by them are used to underwrite schemes in poorly performing states. Those also happen to be states where the BJP has its bases and the national party would be invested in increasing their numbers in Parliament.

A state such as Tamil Nadu is therefore poised at that moment when it can potentially see its national electoral clout diminish even if it is a super performer on economic and social fronts.

Hence, the outreach in Delhi! DMK sources say that the chief minister is pushing for and will play a role in coordinating an Opposition front. He has been in touch with other state satraps such as West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and one of the highlights of the Delhi trip was his day out with Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. The two visited a model school and a mohalla health clinic in Delhi and Stalin said that he would “also establish a world-class model school in Chennai” and invited his Delhi counterpart for it. The DMK-AAP bonhomie was noteworthy because the younger party has been something of an outlier to joint Opposition initiatives as it has built its bases in Delhi and now Punjab by destroying the Congress that remains central to joint Opposition initiatives. Indeed, the Congress was an alliance partner in the DMK-led front that swept the state elections in May 2021.

It is in this backdrop of Opposition chaos and low Congress morale after the recent state elections that Stalin chose Delhi as the venue to put out the message that in order to “save India”, all parties must put aside their differences. He had a strong ideological content to the messaging: My plea, he said, is that if we wish to preserve diversity, federalism, democracy, secularism, equality, fraternity, state rights and education rights, we must all leave aside our individual political mindsets and unite. He also urged the Congress to develop “principled friendship” with parties at the all-India level such as the one it has with the DMK in Tamil Nadu. He urged cooperation between the Congress, Left and regional parties.

The numbers in Parliament currently show the increasing clout of the BJP, which has managed to cross the 100-seat mark in the Rajya Sabha. Its combined strength in Parliament is around 400. A poor second is the Congress with a combined strength in both Houses at 86, followed by the TMC (35) and the DMK (34). Yet when we unfold the electoral map of India as we head for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, it becomes clear that the BJP faces the greater challenge when confronted by a regional party that combines performance with a distinct linguistic and regional identity. The statistical possibility of a BJP defeat increases when it faces a regional force, while in a national election, the Congress is a poor contender to the Modi-led BJP. The only choice, therefore, in what may be described as a do-or-die situation, is to position a federal front with the regional parties having as much clout as the Congress.

Indeed, it is only parties like the DMK, TMC and even AAP that have managed the task of keeping the BJP out of their domains or of defeating the national party as Mamata Banerjee managed very substantially exactly a year ago. Each of the three parties, besides others such as the TRS that rules Telangana and the Shiv Sena-led alliance government in power in Maharashtra confront a daily onslaught from agencies under the Central government. The old rules of the game and ideas of cooperative federalism do not apply when confronted by the RSS/BJP’s ideological and political mission.

As for the DMK itself, in an age when “welfarism” is spoken of as if it’s a new invention of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, MK Stalin would like to bring national attention to the Dravida model of social justice and development as an alternative to the Hindutva construct. Tamil Nadu also has concerns about the National Education Policy and the state has moved a Bill to exclude medical students from the NEET entrance exam but the BJP-appointed Governor is sitting on the Bill that is a sensitive public issue in the state. But more than anything else, the DMK leadership is historically and ideologically invested against any cultural norms, policies and narratives that assert the supremacy of the Hindutva national construct and impinge on the autonomy of the state.