The Marina uprising is a wake-up call for India's political class

 

It is a reflection of the trust deficit in the government of the day that the Collector and SP of Madurai district were turned away from Alanganallur village on Saturday evening, minutes after the Tamil Nadu governor had signed the ordinance permitting Jallikattu, the bull-taming sport. Alanganallur village, 16 km from Madurai city, is where traditionally the most grand Jallikattu has taken place over several years. 

 

The two officials had gone to inspect the arrangements put in place for the Jallikattu event on Sunday. Chief minister O Panneerselvam is to inaugurate the event in Alanganallur after what he would think was a hard-fought battle to get the ordinance issued. But the villagers think the ordinance is just a ploy to force the protests in Madurai and Chennai to be called off. 

 

"We want nothing short of a proper law which will allow Jallikattu permanently,'' said Sakthivel, a resident of Alanganallur. Some others even threatened to fly the national flag at half mast on Republic Day if suitable laws are not passed by then. 

 

While the Marina uprising is being seen as a fight for Jallikattu, it would be too simplistic to narrow it to just that. It is the culmination of a deep sense of fatigue with the political culture of Tamil Nadu, where one Dravidian party cannot look beyond family and the other looks set to go the same way. Where the government is so ineffective that it cannot get Cauvery water promised to it to its fields. Where over one hundred farmers have died or killed themselves in the last two months, due to one of the worst drought conditions in Tamil Nadu in the last 140 years. 

 

Tamil Nadu hardly ever reacts this way. It never did when caste-related murders took place where Dalit boys were killed allegedly by Backward caste families. The caste-obsessed Tamil Nadu society is intolerant to a girl from a BC family falling in love with a Dalit youth and crimes most often even have political sanctity with both Dravidian parties dominated by the well-off castes like the Thevars, Gounders, Nadars and Vanniyars. 

 

Even when Chennai was ravaged by the floods in December 2015 and the Jayalalithaa government was conspicuous by its absence, the citizens did not show their anger against the establishment. They did not complain even when AIADMK cadre pasted photographs of Amma on private relief material. In the run-up to the elections also, they did not criticise the ruling party. 

 

In the last 30 years, the Tamilian has shown his anger only at election time, throwing the ruling party out of office. But this time, he did not do even that with the poor index of opposition unity helping Jayalalithaa return to power. The Marina protest is a culmination of pent-up anger and anguish against the corrupt political ecosystem of Tamil Nadu boiling over. A system that thinks nothing of purchasing votes by bribing voters with 500 and 1000 rupees and encouraging joblessness by feeding them with freebies. 

 

The Marina uprising is a rude wake-up call for Tamil Nadu's political parties. Lakhs of students, professionals, lawyers, homemakers coming out on the streets in Chennai's version of the Arab spring managed to exert enough pressure to force the executive to defy the judiciary and the Supreme court ban on Jallikattu. 

 

That the apolitical, leaderless protest ordered the political leaders to stay away is like a slap on their faces. They have been effectively told they are not needed. Speeches by volunteers tell the crowd that the ordinance has been made possible not by Tamil Nadu's 39 MPs but by the crowd at the Marina. The crowds heckle the politicians now for taking credit with the AIADMK, the DMK and BJP coming in for sharp criticism. 

 

That has not prevented the parties from hogging credit. The DMK indulged in a rail roko agitation, indicating a paucity of ideas. Criticism nudged MK Stalin to sit on a fast the next day. The PMK took on a confrontational stand, threatening to organise Jallikattu on Republic Day if an ordinance was not issued by then. The AIADMK was interested in ensuring maximum credit for Sasikala. The BJP has flooded social media giving credit for the ordinance to Modi and other party leaders. 

 

The Chennai protest has set a precedent that could be exploited by people elsewhere in India. It is also dangerous because a few lakh people can get together and hold the state to ransom.

 

But what the political parties do not realise is that the current standoff has changed the grammar of protests in India. They would do well to indulge in course correction. Because in effect, India @ 70 has shifted gears.