Commentary/Mani Shankar Aiyar

The Bhagavad Gita has more to teach failed politicians than Seshan's Code of Conduct

Certainly not. On any rational calculation, an election held tomorrow would bring the TMC an even more overwhelming victory than it received a hundred days ago. On the same basis of rationality, it would be impossible to forecast the conditions in which the next elections would be held or when, and, therefore, what its outcome will be. There is, therefore, no alternative to struggle -- while leaving it to the future to take care of the outcome. The Bhagavad Gita has more to teach failed politicians than Seshan's Code of Conduct.

The panchayat elections -- if held --- would, in fact, be an opportunity for renaissance rather than a confirmation of the drubbing we so recently received. Not because candidates standing on our symbol are going to fare particularly well but because the overwhelming majority of panchayat seats -- those at the village level -- are being contested on a non-party basis: the law says so.

The best reputed of these candidates, in terms of acknowledged integrity, are likely to be those least associated as party activist with village-level development over the last several years. Those most actively associated with the ruling party-bureaucracy nexus that goes by the name of grassroots development, are the ones most universally recognised as venal.

The DMK-TMC being now the ruling alliance, and the AIADMK having most recently been the ruling party, it is those untainted with such associations who are likely to start with the least handicap. The Indian National Congress, not having been the ruling party for three uninterrupted decades, is undoubtedly the party with the least stain on its name --- it has had little opportunity, in Tamil Nadu at any rate, of tainting itself over the last three decades! If therefore, a sizeable number of elected gram panchayat panches belong to, or can be enticed into the Indian National Congress, we could begin worming our way back into business.

This, at any rate, is a line I plug as I try to rally round the remnants of my troops. What is gratifying is that so few of those who have really been associated with me have defected to the other side. It is not the Congress that has moved over to the TMC, it is the Moopanar faction that has done so.

That is a much more sizeable chunk of the Congress, with a much more sizeable public following, than I had earlier given them credit for. On that, I confess, I have had to eat crow. But that has not left me alone on the burning deck. There are others prepared to be signed with me. That is reassuring, even heart-warming. For comradeship in reverses is more valuable --- because it is more genuine --- than comradeship when the good times roll.

The month of August is the month when the Cauvery is brimful. As a child, I remember, August used to be the month of the floods. It is the month in which the 18th day of the Tamil month of Adi falls, the day of a universal picnic by all at the riverside, one of the most charming festivals in the country.

As I cross and criss-cross the Cauvery, I do not recollect ever having seen the Cauvery in this month running so low. But while there is some expression of concern when asked, I am somewhat taken aback to find there is no palpable anger over the immediate threat to the summer crop and the imminent threat to the second winter crop in a row.

I ask my colleagues: Is anger over the Cauvery waters a simulated row of political parties -- or something really affecting the economic lifeline of the people?

One colleague hazards the hypothesis that so much of the land having been switched to sugarcane, the problem is not as acute as it was when rice alone was the staple crop. Another suggests that since paddy cultivation is such back-breaking work, many who formerly had no option but to be farm workers are now relieved to find other avenues of work -- manual labour, true, but less tiring, more certain and more remunerative than farm work.

The alternative work opportunities are not in the same area and could be as far away as Kerala or Andhra Pradesh, but geographic mobility as the route to economic betterment has long been ingrained in the people of these parts. So, I am told, if Karnataka will not send us water, our people will go to Karnataka in search of work.