J Jayalalithaa: The maker of superhit melodramas

Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa's life is nothing short of the superhit melodramas she starred in as an actress.

Jayalalithaa was a toddler when she lost her father Jayaram. Her mother Sandhya later introduced the 15-year-old Jayalalithaa to the Tamil film industry. Jayalalithaa’s film career started on a high as her first film Vennira Aadai (White Dress) became a big hit.

Jayalalithaa’s first film with MG Ramachandran Aayirathil Oruvan (One Among Thousands) was a runaway hit and gave the Tamil film industry a superhit pairing. The duo would go on and redraw the political contours of Tamil Nadu.

Politics, relatively, was tougher. In 1989, when Jayalalithaa first entered the assembly and became the opposition leader, the ruling DMK was intolerant of an Opposition led by the young actress turned politician. On the day of the state budget, heated arguments between then chief minister M Karunanidhi and Jayalalithaa led to violence in the house.

It was a free-for-all with members on both sides hurling abuses and shoes, and a minister even pulled Jayalalithaa’s saree. In the next assembly election in 1991, her party, in a pre-poll alliance with the Congress, wrested power and made her the CM.

In her initial days, she pursued a politics starkly different from that of the DMK. In the 1990s, the Tamil Tigers were at the pinnacle of their popularity, enjoying popular support.

She, however, ruthlessly went after the LTTE cadre and supporters. But her five-year reign was marred by allegations of corruption and ill-governance. The defeat in the 1996 election was humiliating. Having lost herself and with just four MLAs, she withdrew into a shell for some time. In the following years, she focussed on fighting an aggressive DMK and corruption cases booked against her.

In 2001, when she became chief minister for a second time, one of the first things she did was to order the arrest of her predecessor Karunanidhi. In September 2001, Jayalalithaa had to step aside and pick a junior aide O Paneerselvam as a stand-in candidate after the Supreme Court termed her nomination as CM unconstitutional. The apex court had famously observed that the people’s mandate cannot subvert the constitution.

In the subsequent year, she cleared her name in the graft case that led to her disqualification and reclaimed her chair.

Toward the end of her second term (2001-2006), she took some unpopular but tough decisions like dismissing thousands of government employees en masse. She even appeared to move toward the BJP when she attempted to enact an anti-conversion legislation. These decisions she later reversed.

In the 2006 election, she lost power only to return five years later and become chief minister for a third term in 2011.

Jayalalithaa has exhibited a keen understanding of politics. She dumped the Congress long ago — she even recommended the release of Rajiv Gandhi’s killers from the Vellore prison after the Supreme Court commuted their death sentence to life. That was a shrewd political move ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.

In the run-up to the May 2014 polls, there was apprehension even among members of the AIADMK that not allying with the BJP may cost the party dear. But Jayalalithaa’s decision to depend only on her popularity paid off — the AIADMK won 37 out of 39 seats in the state — displaying her understanding of and grip over the state’s electorate.

She bucked the trend once again when this year she beat a strong anti-incumbency wave to become the first person in 32 years to be voted back to the Chief Minister's office in Tamil Nadu.

Jayalalithaa never had to develop a taste for precarious power or for accommodation or compromise. She has never 'come' to power, she has only stormed to it with mandates of brute majority.

*Inputs from KR Balasubramanyam & V Prem Shanker & Shyam Balasubramanian (ET Bureau)