Women power

The charisma and magnetic vote-pulling power of two women leaders assumed an even greater dimension as Ms J. Jayalalithaa and Ms Mamata Banerjee displayed their capacity once again to carry their party single-handedly to electoral triumph. Shunning allies and defying all odds, the two proved that direct synchronisation with the hearts of the common people is still the tried and tested route to political power. Ms Jayalalithaa’s win is historic as she defied a distinct pattern of an anti-incumbency vote in replicating her political mentor MGR’s feat. There too, MGR had the sympathy vote in 1984 because he was hospitalised in the US and the state felt duty-bound to support him.

Ms Jayalalithaa’s handling of Tamil Nadu as a welfare state with every requirement of the poor met, beginning with satiating the hunger of the people, has given her unprecedented popularity. In the last five years she has won back-to-back Assembly elections and a Lok Sabha poll in which she decimated the Opposition with 37 seats out of 39. She has proved the efficacy of freebies even as she cleverly avoided bowing too much to the popular social voice screaming for prohibition, although she promised phased implementation.

Ms Banerjee has also touched with her empathy a majority of the people who are just about keeping their lives together in the face of galloping prices. Her chemistry with the commoner is a phenomenon perhaps unmatched even by Ms Jayalalithaa’s ability to gauge the lives of women and make them as comfortable as possible with food security and gadgets to ease drudgery in the kitchen. Even so, it would be too simplistic to say they win only because the women vote for them.