How Tamil Nadu parties slept when cockroaches raged on

A group of cockroaches is called an intrusion. Cockroach Janata Party lived up to the description, intruding into the political fortress of a govt that had cared little for opposition voices for 12 years. But the real surprise was elsewhere. As students took to the streets over irregularities in NEET, the political parties of Tamil Nadu — a state that has made opposition to the exam a political cause — largely stayed away.

Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation had become politically inevitable by the time the student protest grew beyond Jantar Mantar into a national movement. Political parties and student organizations added momentum to the agitation. Yet, in Tamil Nadu, the parties that should have had the most to gain from the issue watched from the sidelines.

Congress in the state woke up late – and did little – after Rahul Gandhi was detained for picketing in front of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s house in Delhi on July 21. I wasn’t too surprised at Edappadi K Palaniswami’s decision to stay clear of any trouble with BJP. But who is chief minister C Joseph Vijay scared of? Soon after coming to power in May, Vijay said his govt would not take a confrontational stand against the Union govt. Fair enough. A govt can choose restraint without its political party choosing silence. Why didn’t TVK take to the streets in solidarity with the agitating students?

It took more than two weeks for Vijay to voice his support for the protest. Abolition of NEET is the only solution, he said, but didn’t get his party to organize protests of its own. He criticized Centre’s handling of the protest and called the detention of leaders in Delhi “undemocratic”, but the state police disallowed public protests and fortified the Marina, forcing much of the protest to be confined to the CPI headquarters in Chennai.

TN school education minister A Rajmohan got a taste of the protesters’ mood when he, in a late show of solidarity, visited the CPI office on Saturday. He was booed. TVK’s hesitation was particularly surprising since Vijay had made his first silent political statement by visiting the family of a ‘NEET victim’ in Ariyalur in Sep 2017, six-and-a-half years before he launched TVK.

What puzzles me more is DMK’s half-muted response. All it did was gather its MPs to hold up some placards in front of Parliament on July 23, demanding abolition of NEET. Perhaps DMK’s hesitation had something to do with its reluctance to be seen as supporting a protest that Congress had tried to appropriate. If so, that was not just political pettiness; it was a blunder. Subdued after the assembly election defeat, this was a good time for DMK to reactivate its cadres.
The Delhi protesters had a single

demand – Pradhan’s scalp – and they were protesting irregularities in the conduct of NEET, and not the exam per se. I am not a votary of abolishing NEET. A common entrance test has a purpose, though its score should not be the sole determinant of admission. But Tamil Nadu parties that have spent years demanding the abolition of NEET wasted an opportunity to turn that political position into political action.

The Left understood what the others missed: political movements are not always waiting for parties to lead them; sometimes they are waiting for parties to show up. The Left did. The others largely didn’t.

For Vijay, who wants TVK to become a full-fledged political alternative, this was a chance to turn his old association with the NEET cause into present-day political action. For DMK, it was an opportunity to reconnect with a generation that did not vote for it in the last election. Both chose caution when politics demanded presence. They missed the moment.

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