One of the major outcomes of Election 2014 is the spectacular show put up by the two women Chief Ministers, Tamil Nadu’s J.Jayalalithaa, who by mid-afternoon was leading in 36 out of 39 seats, with an estimated vote share of 44.5 per cent and Trinamool Congress’s Mamata Banerjee, whose party was leading in 34 seats with 39.1 per cent vote. Together they will get many, many more seats than the Congress. Can there be a greater shame for India’s oldest party?
In Tamil Nadu it was clearly the combo of welfare schemes such as Amma’s canteens and freebies such as wet grinders and electric blenders, which considerably reduce the woman’s tedium at home, and subsidised foodgrains to the poor, that went in the AIADMK’s favour. Add to this no scams surfacing in the Jaya government during the last three years of her reign, and the legacy of MGR’s die-hard women devotees in rural Tamil Nadu and it was sweet victory for Tamil Nadu’s Amma.
DMK’s dismal performance was the result of an anger in the people of Tamil Nadu… was it against A.Raja, the 2G Spectrum scam-tainted politician who was given a seat from Nilgiris or the bickering among the two siblings Stalin and Alagiri, which resulted in the expulsion of the latter, only detailed analysis will tell. In a way it was also a part of the story of the Indian electorate rejecting dynasty politics, beginning from Delhi and taking in its sweep the Abdullahs of Jammu and Kashmir – the NCP will come a cropper - as also the DMK’s first family. And this despite the DMK getting 23 per cent vote share!
In the Modi tsunami which gave the BJP its finest ever moment in Indian politics with leads in a spectacular number of 286 seats, the lone politician who took on Modi, blow for blow, calling him the “butcher of Gujarat”, held her own and had the sweet taste of success in West Bengal. And that was West Bengal’s Didi. To her credit, unlike Jayalalithaa who had a mentor in MGR, or BSP’s Mayawati, who had Kanshi Ram to promote her, Mamata is a self-made politician with no godfathers. She has fought many bitter battles to reach where she is standing now.
Mayawati, on the other hand, was simply swept away in the Modi-wave in Uttar Pradesh where the NDA was leading in 72 seats, and even with 20 per cent votes, is likely to draw a blank. This was a pathetic show for a woman who had unabashedly unveiled her ambition to become the Prime Minister of India, by openly playing the caste card and telling her supporters to make a Dalit the PM of India. The other two – Jaya and Mamata – had made no such open canvassing!
The other woman Chief Minister who delivered was Vasundhara Raje of Rajasthan, making her State the only other larger one, apart from Gujarat, to deliver all the 25 seats to the BJP’s central kitty. With triumph, addressing the media, she called it “Mission-25 accomplished”!