| Published on 21-03-2007 In National |
| Viewed 1466 times |
| No more fast ones, please |
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Written by
M. Anand |
Why fasts have ceased to be effective political weapons
One does not know what really Jayalalithaa achieved by her one-day fast on the Cauvery issue other than underlining her disagreement with Karunanidhi's approach on the tribunal's final award. For that matter when have the two really agreed on any issue, even if it concerns the welfare of the State.
But her fast had us rewinding back to her more famous four-day protest when she sat in front of the Anna Samadhi in July 1993 demanding that Karnataka immediately release water under the interim award. One Sunday morning she, the all-powerful Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, drove down and plonked herself on a chair in front of the Samadhi announcing the intention of her fast.
"It'll be a fast unto death if the Centre does not implement the award and water is not released immediately by Karnataka," she declared with aplomb. Soon the state machinery got into overdrive as PWD officials put up a stage with an elaborate shamiana and erected barricades for the thondars to have untrammeled darshan of the Puratchi Thalaivi.
The police established an elaborate security perimeter around her and a hotline was established with Delhi. Health Minister S. Muthuswamy formed a team of doctors to monitor Amma's health on an hourly basis. An air-conditioned van was stationed behind the stage in which Jayalalithaa's friend Sasikala would camp.
Occasionally Jayalalithaa would disappear into the van for a few minutes – nature's compulsions, explained her minions though one senior outstation journalist had the temerity to report that she probably sipped some choice beverages during such breaks.
On the second day, the AIADMK managers had plastered the city with posters and banners praising the "Cauvery Thaai". And cadres from all over the state were mobilized in thousands to file past before the reclining figure of Puratchi Thalaivi. Soon the word was spread that everyone who mattered in the state call on Jayalalithaa to extend his or her support to her fast.
Soon the who is who of the filmdom started arriving one by one. They would arrive, wait in a small barricaded area behind the stage, word would go to the fasting leader that so and so has arrived. On getting her nod, the VIP would come up on stage bend down or sit down on the dais to say a few words before signing off with a vanakkam and walk away.
Since everyone in the Tamil film industry had marked his or her attendance, it became imperative even for Rajnikanth – a Maharashtrian-Kannadiga combo to show up, risking a backlash on his family members in Bangalore, where counter protests had been launched by Kannada chauvinists. After much dithering the actor turned up on the third day.
Meanwhile the Bangarappa government in Karnataka had firmly turned down the demand to release water claiming there was none to spare in the KR Sagar. Jayalalithaa and the Centre were in a fix since the lady's health was 'fast deteriorating' as per the health bulletins released by Muthuswamy.
The AIADMK leader was looking wane and was now fully stretched on a cot with two pillows for support.
After numerous phone calls between Delhi and Chennai (Madras then) a face-saving exit formula was worked out under which a monitoring committee would be appointed which would supervise Karnataka's water releases periodically. Jayalalithaa agreed and Ghulam Nabi Azad, the then Union Water Resources Minister in the Narasimha Rao government, flew down, gave her the customary glass of lemon juice and Amma declared that she had emerged victorious.
Even after the monitoring committee got appointed, Karnataka baulked at releasing water and Jayalalithaa only approached the Supreme Court to compel its neighbouring state. Strangely she never thought of the 'fast unto death' method to arm-twist either Karnataka or Delhi.
For, by then, Jayalalithaa had realized that fasting as a political weapon had lost much of its potency. Only when the moral standing of the person undertaking the fast, like a Mahatma Gandhi or Jayaprakash Narayanan, backed it, the fast could stir the conscience of the masses. At the hands of someone like Jayalalithaa, who had by then bought the infamous TANSI land and had started to collect skeletons in her many wardrobes, it had been degraded into a farcical tool of one-upmanship.
No wonder present day leaders prefer the tokenism called one- day fast, which is essentially skipping one meal between breakfast and dinner. First most leaders, horribly unfit, cannot afford to play with their health by resorting to a longwinded fast. Intense media scrutiny ensures that they cannot have a sip or bite by the side, as a famous comedy track in the Rajnikanth film "Mannan" illustrated the pitfall of a "fast unto death."
A fast unto death is normally announced in the hope of a compromise formula arrived after a few hours, or at the max a couple of days or at worse forced hospitalization to be put on saline and glucose. Even the recent fast by Trinamool leader Mamta Banerjee caught the public imagination more for the leader's mental stamina of not giving up in spite of pleas from the Prime Minister onwards. Only a Presidential appeal was finally honoured, and that too after her confidants conveyed to her that reverberations at the ground level had started to subside.
So here is one appeal to all our netas – please do not resort to these one-day tamashas called fasts to prove a point. You neither really fast nor do you prove a point. At the end of her one-day show all Jayalalithaa managed was giving an uninterrupted darshan to her thondars who rarely get to see her these days.
Instead, our leaders could try non-stop bungee jumping for a day. It would be novel, promote the sport in a big way and more importantly, hilariously satisfying to see them hanging upside down since we are in no position to hang them the other way round.
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