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Better Off Than Dad

Services Sector: Growth Engine

Faces: Adventure Capitalists

Adapters: Tradition Meets Technology

Industry: Being Indian

Careers: Techies Line Up For Jobs Online

The Scindias: Will Power
The contentious will of Rajmata Vijayaraje Scindia virtually disinherits her only son Madhavrao Scindia. This controversy threatens to mar the reputation and respectability of one of India's best- known and highly regarded royal families.

Gujarat: Shaky Regime
Confronted with a monumental disaster, the Gujarat Government is at the centre of relief operations. Was its reaction timely and efficient? Could more lives have been saved?

And Greed Hits Home
More than anything, it was corruption that killed people in Gujarat as buildings constructed by getting around norms came crashing down.

Public Sector: Shotgun Exit
First large PSU where workers agreed to leave the company.

STATES: TAMIL NADU

From Anna to Amma

By Arun Ram

The PMK rebellion marks a total political realignment in the state that is likely to have a decisive impact on the assembly election results

BOUQUETS FOR NOW: For Jayalalitha, the tie-up with Ramadoss was a coup de grace

Long ago, as a medical student, S. Ramadoss must have learnt about schizophrenia. On February 5, the founder-leader of Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) triggered the political variant of it with clinical precision. Coming as it does on the eve of the assembly elections in Tamil Nadu, the PMK's decision to desert the NDA and court J. Jayalalitha's AIADMK has left virtually every Dravida party paranoid. And the rebellion of five PMK MPs, including two Union ministers, A. Ponnusamy and N.T. Shanmugham, has totally changed political equations in the state.

A decisive player in the new scenario is Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC) leader G.K. Moopanar. For, the desperate DMK President and Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi is trying to woo back the TMC, though Moopanar continues to vacillate. Any middle path would mean Moopanar leading a third front, as is the hope of the Dalit Panthers of India (DPI), which is pulling out of the AIADMK combine. Moopanar is also being pressured by the newly formed New Justice Party (NJP) to make such a move. The NJP, led by former AIADMK MP A.C. Shanmugham, represents the Mudaliar community. Another recently founded casteist party, the Makkal Tamil Desam (MTD) of the Yadavas, might also try for a third front.

Jayalalitha, on her part, has effected a coup de grace. The way in which Ramadoss discovered the worth of "the sister" shows the meticulous planning on their part. When Ramadoss met Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee on February 5, he was armed with the resignations of his two ministers, Ponnusamy (minister of state for petroleum) and Shanmugham (minister of state for coal) as also a letter showering praises on Vajpayee. Then he flew back with his ministers to Chennai to announce that he would be meeting Jayalalitha the next day. The second act looked a much-rehearsed one. Ramadoss drove to Jayalalitha's Poes Garden residence and did the customary salutations for the benefit of the cameras. It was total submission. Karunanidhi, who unconventionally read out a statement saying the PMK's switch-over was anticipated, contradicted himself when he spoke extempore soon after. "I didn't think I would be fooled," he replied when asked why he met Ramadoss last month. And that meeting, as is evident now, was on the advice of Jayalalitha. Ramadoss, when he was being viewed as a fence-sitter, called on Karunanidhi to make a promise only to be broken later.

But now, everyone except Ramadoss and Jayalalitha is faced with the question of survival. The TMC, which was compelled to sail with Jayalalitha after its debacle in the 1999 Lok Sabha polls, finds its position in the alliance turning precarious with the PMK's entry. It can never subscribe to Ramadoss' unabashed love for the LTTE. More than its ideological opposition to the PMK, what makes the TMC shudder is the high probability of the PMK hijacking the second-largest-party-in-the-AIADMK-combine status from it. And Ramadoss has made it clear that his goal is to rule Pondicherry, to begin with.

The first casualty in the AIADMK front is the dpi. Party convener R. Tirumavalavan maintains he can never think of being part of any alliance which has the PMK as a partner. A small solace to the DMK now is the willingness of the DPI and the Dr Krishnasamy-led Puthiya Tamizhagam to dock their wagons with the NDA. This would help lend a pro-Dalit image to the DMK, while the alliance of the Vanniyar PMK and the Thevar-supported AIADMK could be projected as anti-Dalit.

Amidst all this, the Congress is in the tightest spot. While the party is a near non-entity in Tamil Nadu, it still has its stakes in Pondicherry, which the PMK aims to capture. Congress President Sonia Gandhi has summoned TNCC President E.V.K.S. Elangovan and other leaders to Delhi. With nowhere to go, say Congressmen, Sonia might ask the PCC to continue in the AIADMK fold, which would mean losing Pondicherry too.

MetroScape
Random Readings
Arvind Krishna Mehrotra would rather be "accurate" in his latest undertaking, a book of Kabir's poetry in English, even if he says "Kabir's greatest hits may not have been written by him at all".
more...

Looking Glass

Kolkata: Restaurant

Bangalore:
Art Exhibition

New Delhi: Play

Who says Indian theatre is dying? Playwrights--both veteran and budding--in the country had a chance to interact with those from the Royal Court Theatre, London, at its first residency workshop in Bangalore recently.
It was a fortnight
of enrichment, concludes Principal Correspondent Stephen David in Despatches.

"I was very much against the idea of India," says William Dalrymple, author, The City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi. In conversation with INDIA TODAY's Sonia Faleiro, he talks about his old girlfriend, Delhi and his "enormously exciting" next book, The White Moghuls in Interviews.