Civil activism and poll politics are strange bedfellows?

CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu has, of late, witnessed several protests as part of civil activism over one issue or the other, reflecting people’s rising awareness of their civic rights. As if corroborating this trend, a few months ago, Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami admitted in the Assembly that the State had seen the highest number of protests in the country. 

After the demise of two key leaders of the Dravidian majors — DMK chief M Karunanidhi and AIADMK supremo J Jayalalithaa — civil activism against corruption and sand mining and for prohibition and environmental protection seems to have taken centre stage in the State politics.
These civil society groups, largely unaffiliated to any political party, have got strong support from a section of voters, especially the youth, who have actively participated in agitations, rallies, hunger strikes and demonstrations.

However, the million dollar question is whether civil activism gets translated into solid votebank. 
Going by the past record, the impact of these groups on electoral politics appears to be very limited, if not totally non-existent. 

Take, for instance, the electoral failure of anti-nuclear activist S P Udayakumar in 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Udayakumar spearheaded the protests against the Koodankulam nuclear plant in Idinthakarai village in Tirunelveli district. The protest, which lasted over 100 days, backed by over 200 coastal villages, came to an end in 2013 with a police attack on the agitators. Over 6,000 people were booked on sedition charges. Later, some of the cases were withdrawn following a Supreme Court order. 

And yet, a large section of voters from these villages, accounting for up to 25 per cent of the electorate in the Radhapuram Assembly segment, voted for the AIADMK rather than for the anti-nuclear activists in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls held a few months after the police action.  

Udayakumar admitted that converting the people’s support into votes was a challenge. “People maintain different yardsticks for politics and activism. In politics, you need to be connected with people and should have widespread appeal,” he said. While facing elections, activists are also stymied by the lack of popularity for the political party that gives them a ticket, he noted. “Large sections of electors  choose to vote for a party, not for the candidate. The misconception that one or two candidates cannot bring about any major change also affects the success of activists. The peoples’ expectations from political party are different from their expectations of activists,” explained Udayakumar.

Environmental activist Piyush Manush agreed that civil society activism had never influenced voters, noting that lack of confidence in the political leadership and a feeling of victimhood had driven ‘apolitical’ activism in the state. 

Interestingly, the State has a history of mobilisation of people. In 1916, the South Indian Liberal Federation (SILF), popularly called Justice Party, was launched to fight for representation of non-Brahmins in government jobs. Its legacy of protests began in 1925 with the self-respect movement led by Dravidian stalwart Periyar E V Ramasamy against the Brahmin hegemony in social life.

These protests for social reform attained political character from 1930. A series of protest, led by the Dravidar Kazhagam in 1937, prevented the first attempt to impose Hindi on the Madras Presidency government. In 1967, massive agitations led by DMK,  which had split from the DK, thwarted the second attempt to impose Hindi on Tamil Nadu. 

However, over the time, as ‘dissent’ was co-opted by political parties, their credibility began eroding in the late 1990s, adversely affecting public interest in the issues raised by them.

Similarly, Piyush pointed out that the PMK, which had impleaded itself in a case against the Chennai-Salem Expressway project in the Madras High Court, had now aligned with the ruling AIADMK.  “It is evident that they used the people’s struggle to increase their bargaining power,” he said, adding that voting in elections was decided by several factors including caste, drama and charisma of leaders. Public activism has no space there, he said. 

Referring to the BJP’s victory in the 2017 Gujarat Assembly elections, Manush said traders had protested against the State government. “But still a majority of them seemed to have voted for the BJP. I won’t be surprised if the candidates of the AIADMK or its allies win Thoothukudi in the upcoming LS polls,” he said. 

Senthil Arumugam, general secretary of Satta Panchayat Iyakkam, an NGO that advocates prohibition and RTI activism, said social groups, at best, could only be watchdogs for good governance. “It has to be accepted that people are willing to choose someone new if that person appears to be a strong alternative force, like (Delhi Chief Minister) Arvind Kejriwal,” he said. “If people accept the new entrants — Rajnikanth and Kamal Haasan — as alternatives, then there are some chances that newcomers, including activists, may be accepted at various levels.”