'Puratchi Kalaignar' Vijayakanth does not seem to have disappointed his followers, though his DMDK may not have won any municipality or Panchayat for itself. Ahem, in Vridhachalam, from where the leader was elected to the state Assembly only a few months ago, the party came a cropper, but you see in neighbouring Panrutti, it has done commendably well.

More important it polled nearly as many votes as did the AIADMK. There is obviously a steady erosion of the AIADMK's voter base. Obviously unless Amma realizes what is happening and sensibly decides to forge an alliance with the black variation of her mentor, her political survival will be in question.

But then it is not her political future or the new kalaignar's that we should focus our attention on now, but with the very emergence of Vijayakanth as a political factor, what it means for the Tamil polity, and particularly what it reveals of the attitude of our people.

The other day a college student, who cannot be charged with complete ignorance of the political processes, wondered why not Vijaykanth, when all other politicians had failed us.

The same kind of thinking that saw in Lok Parthiran a possible alternative to our rotten politicians.

Parithran is not to be heard any more. It has split amid some ugly bickering. Incidentally those holding the reins of power in it were accused of shutting out non-Brahmins. That is some wonderful beginning and perhaps end too for that refreshing alternative.

Will a similar fate overtake the DMDK or whether Vijaykanth would emulate MGR is too early to say. But the point is a frustrated, nay disgusted, electorate is willing to look at any option.

"Anyway all these fellows are scoundrels. Nothing good is going to come of them. Why not give some new outfit a chance? They remain untested. Parithran chaps are fired by some remarkable zeal. A man like Viajayakanth does not need money, he has enough for generations, so you don't except him to be corrupt. In a worst case scenario, they will disappoint, so what. Even otherwise all the options of the past have been proved to be a mirage…"

Such a mindset actually results in a blurring of choices. It is with such a naïve reasoning that I intend jousting.

Interestingly the Lok Parithran was still groping for an ideology well after it had plunged headlong into electoral politics.

One of their candidates during the Assembly polls and a key figure in Tamil Nadu, Santhanagopalan Vasudev, had conceded in an interview then - Frankly, I don't have any concrete agenda. The fact is we are a new party. We know that there are plans now, and that they don't work. The existing policies are flawed. So, we need to do a lot of research on those lines and come up with policies that will work."

A typical middle class attitude. We're dissatisfied with the present, we want a change, but we are not sure what the changed scenario would be. The utmost one could say about such people is they might not be corrupt.

Assuming the dust raised by some dissidents in Tamil Nadu over campaign spending was all motivated and ipso facto they won't be corrupt, what then? Even absolute incorruptibility does not necessarily ensure better delivery of economic and social justice.

When asked about his plans for Mylapore, if he was going to be elected, Vasudev could think of nothing better than attending to the traffic snarls! So much for their vision.

Paritran guys did pretty little grassroots work.

(Anyway the man quoted earlier talked pompously about ushering in macro-level changes. instead of getting trapped in panchayat issues.)

But Vijayakanth seems to be more astute. He would not be fooled by any media coverage and has been assiduously setting up units at the village level. With the AIADMK out of power and Amma's chances of returning to Fort St.George in the immediate future not all that rosy, there has been a steady erosion of her base, one learns.

As mentioned earlier, Vijaykanth could, with some carefully worked out game plan and some luck, emerge a major player. But what is his vision?

Except for talking about rooting out corruption and scorning the Dravidian parties, he has not said anything specific about what he stands for.

Of course he is for re-opening of toddy shops. Even there it is more a populist slogan, for that could cut ice with toddy tappers in the southern districts. Otherwise he is careful not to reveal anything of what he stands for, whether he is for economic reforms, reservations, Dalit advancement, the LTTE, one cannot get him to commit himself in public on any of the major issues before the people.

Again he has been admitting former AIADMK leaders, right, left and centre. How is it justified when he has been cursing all the Dravidian parties relentlessly?

We must also remember he has made his wife his virtual second in command in the DMDK. Clearly he will run the party the way he wants to, no questions asked.

But then who does get to ask him first? In fact he is almost as inaccessible as Jayalalithaa is. He is also known to be rude towards his own cadres. That shot in which he is shown slapping one of his aides in Srirangam is a case in point.

If one is talk about his films, there is nothing edifying about them except for his Rambo-type adventures. Besides there is enough of pelvic gyrations meant to titillate the rural audience he is adored by, so much for his moral concerns.

When MGR walked out of the DMK in 1972, Kamaraj was one of the first to denounce his then ADMK as being no different from its parent party.

Surely MGR did not have to make money on the sly. But we all know what all his minions did and whatever happened under Jayalalithaa. History tells you vividly what happened to the AIADMK'S progenitor, the DMK.

At least in the fifties and sixties, the latter claimed to stand for something. By the time of MGR, whatever we knew by way of the Dravidian ideology had become attenuated. He was all things to all men and women. Precisely what Vijaykanth is pretending to be,

Even if in the coming years, Stalin's misdeeds and Jayalalithaa's miscalculations propel Vijaykanth to the top,that is not going to mean any genuine change for the people at large.

That said, what is the option? For me the Left, which is left out in the race completely thanks to its own innumerable blunders, should sever all those self-destructive ties with the Dravidian parties,  go back to the people, struggle uncompromisingly against the ruling elite and become credible enough to capture power through the ballot.

Too tall an order perhaps. Laughable? Possibly. But certainly anyone who does not spell out clearly what he or she stands for when soliciting votes must be instantly distrusted.