Amma salt: Jayalalithaa's reform based politics

When every rupee counts, cheap and cheerful alternatives are always welcome. So, it is not surprising that Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa has decided to build on the success of her eponymous Amma idlies and water with a new offering: subsidised Amma salt.

As salt plays the most crucial role in imparting flavour to any food, the value of attaching her name to it is incalculable. Given her state’s propensity for extreme expressions of loyalty and gratitude, however, the probability of the condiment itself being eventually renamed Amma by popular demand — as evidence of her indispensability — cannot be entirely ruled out either.

And once the inhabitants of the state have gratefully partaken of her subsidised flavour enhancer, can they really commit the crime of not voting for her later and run the risk of being branded “namak harams”, “salt treachery” being a crime nonpareil in our culture? Indeed, some other CMs could do well to launch their branded salt towards the same end.

Some may quibble about the wisdom of naming state initiatives after a single person, but if Indians have not yet been confounded by the plethora of buildings, roads and schemes named after Nehru-Gandhi prime ministers or various larger-than-life statewide political icons, a pinch of Amma in everything will not make them pucker either.