The Karur tragedy has exposed the huge gaps in Vijay's understanding of realpolitik, elections and political administration, asserts N Sathiya Moorthy.
It's sad but true. Actor-politician Vijay's utter lack of experience, ignorance and unwillingness to recruit people with grassroots-level understanding was the major cause for Saturday's tragedy at his Karur rally that has claimed at least 39 lives, including those of children who did not have vote.
A simple example. Even as the police and government ambulances rushed to the spot and took the injured to hospitals across the influential yet small-sized agrarian town in western Tamil Nadu, Vijay continued to address the rally after the 'commotion' had died down, and even completed his speech.
If only he had men on the ground with organisational authority and responsibilities, and literally so, he would have got early information about the tragedy that was still unfolding before his eyes and acted/reacted accordingly.
At the very least, he would have said, 'Sorry' and wound up the rally and requested his cadres to extend whatever help they could to the authorities undertaking life-saving first-aid work.
Of course, the question would remain if such a course would have added to the commotion or not. But the very fact that the only information he received while addressing the crowd from his refitted caravan, if that's one, was someone climbing up and requesting him to the earshot of TV viewers that one girl had gone missing and the cadres should help locate her.
Vijay did as much immediately, yes, but that's not where it would have stopped if he was surrounded by second-line and local third-line leaders on the vehicles and not bouncers from his film world, where it is fashionable almost overnight across the Indian film industry.
Now, where does it all lead to, especially for Vijay's politics and ambitions to win elections? Definitely he was drawing reasonable crowds, supposedly unpaid for by most accounts, but the Karur tragedy has exposed the huge gaps in his understanding of realpolitik, elections and political administration.
Already, a section of social media, even while mourning the Karur dead, are planning the questions in the voters' minds as to the suitability of an inexperienced and an 'unwilling learner' for the chief ministerial job or anything close to it.
No, their reasons and alleged justification do not flow from this one tragedy, though that may be the clincher as things unfold, post-Karur. In his previous outings at the second TVK conference in Madurai, followed by one in Tiruchi, the police laid down strict conditions for his organising rallies.
Vijay, who is the only one allowed to respond to every criticism and also attack his new-found political opponents, called it political vendetta by the DMK government of Chief Minister M K Stalin.
In the process, Vijay left that view hanging in the voter's mind just as MGR had successfully done in the case of bete noire then DMK chief minister M Karunanidhi when he broke away from the parent party and founded the AIADMK, way back in 1972, which was a different world that Vijay and his advisors did not understand or accept or both.
So even when the Madras high court ticked him off for not following the police directives (which were applicable to all VVIP rallies, too), Vijay stuck to his anti-DMK, anti-Stalin guns.
So serious was the issue on the ground that the high court sought from the state government a scheme for seeking a pre-rally deposit from organisers of such events, to compensate for the loss of public property during their rallies and crowd gatherings.
It's an impractical proposition by the court, yes, but it also reflected the seriousness of the issue.
It remains to be seen how the high court views the causes and reasons for the Karur tragedy, and if it would apportion a part of the blame on the state police, for not providing enough security for the rally -- which the crowds began loathing after the leader had come down heavily on the state government, on that very score.
The problem was/is that Vijay is surrounded, if at all, by three poll strategists who have never contested any election at any time like the leader, and a former income-tax officer, whose expertise in tax-collection and tax-raids, nothing more.
TVK General Secretary N Anand's political past was confined to neighbouring Puducherry, where the dynamics and logistics worked very differently, given the population, electorate and the possible crowds for a leader who rarely appears in public and whose fan following is a legion.
Vijay, who left Karur to neighbouring Tiruchi to fly back to home-base Chennai in his private aircraft, and possibly did not know about the tragedy, or at least the details until later, has since issued a statement, declaring that he was 'heart-broken'. His next moves, both in terms of relief for the affected families and politico-electoral strategy, remains to be seen.
Questions are being asked about the wisdom of Vijay choosing just two venues covering three or four districts, so to say, and not travelling across the particular region, so that small crowds, with inexperienced local organisers handling them, would have all found it easy to manage -- so did the dispersed police force, which was under pressure 'not to meddle' with the crowd.
It was all in public view when TVK cadres/fans jeered the police and then cheered, when the latter was forced to allow a TVK ambulance loaded with drinking water bottles pass without being diverted for first aid work.
As is the wont with an experienced political administrator, Stalin took remote-charge of the situation from Chennai, directed controversial former minister Senthil Balaji, who is a local and who was in station, to take charge along with the district collector and other officials, also despatched pro-active Health Minister Ma Subramaniam, to Karur without loss of time.
The local authorities recalled all off-duty medical professionals attached to the Government Medical College, Karur, and also counterparts from neighbouring districts, to be of help or as a stand-by. According to reports, private hospitals where some injured persons were admitted too rose to the occasion. Local officials advised them not to spare any effort, and bill the state government for all expenses without holding back on any.
Yes, these are routine affairs, which when left to the hands of experienced administrators, both political and bureaucratic, have a way of working on the ground.
Stalin, not stopping with it, also announced ₹10 lakhs each to the families of the dead and ₹1 lakh to those injured. While welcoming the former, there are already social media posts, urging higher compensation for injured victims.
As was to be expected under the circumstances, political party leaders, cutting across party lines, have since joined President Draupadi Murmu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi in condoning the deaths.
Possibly anticipating that the BJP Centre would not leave it at that and would likely want to 'fix' political responsibility for perceived 'police failure', Stalin has since announced a one-person judicial inquiry by retired high court Justice Aruna Jagadeesan.
Earlier, she was the choice of the EPS-led AIADMK government to probe the policefiring at anti-Sterlite protestors in Thoothukudi, in which 13 persons were killed. The final report, presented after the Stalin dispensation took over, was scathing in its criticism of the local police.
Yet, the real problem is for Vijay and the TVK leadership.
First and foremost, he has to run his party as a political party wanting to contest elections should be run. His unwillingness to take along other party leaders, including local persons whose name and face even the local population does not know, and instead surround himself with film world bouncers has made the TVK one-man centric, for the good, bad and ugly things happening around him.
Yes, when there are huge crowds for his rallies, the media, however unfriendly to Vijay, otherwise, has projected it as his success and that of none else. The faceless fan association leaders in the neighbourhood of his successive and successful rallies are unknown.
So, when negative things like the Karur tragedy occur, he alone has ended up shouldering the blame.
Even before Karur, media analysts had suggested openly and obviously without being asked that by travelling to individual districts in a motorcade, Vijay could help in crowd management as fewer fans and voters would gather at individual centres without rushing to a singlevenue.
In the case of the Karur venue, post-tragedy leaks of the TVK's request for police permission clearly stated that they were expecting 10,000 fans (that could comfortably fit into an arena that could accommodate 15,000).
But the final figure is now put at variously between 30,000 and 50,000. Either the local TVK organisers did not know, or did not care seriously about crowd management. Of course, the government will have to explain if it had prior Intelligence input about the kind of crowd that could gather and about the crowd management arrangements by the local police.
Already questions are beginning to be asked about the kind of talent Vijay has around him to run a government and have an efficient set of ministers, with some special talents that are transparent to the voter's eyes.
In the coming days, his critics, especially from among YouTube journalists, are sure to expose and exploit this lacuna in his politico-electoral armour.
All at once, Vijay's calculated yet delayed attack on the AIADMK ally of the BJP, which is his 'ideological enemy' like the DMK being the 'political adversary', has been completely sidelined. Until he made that reference at neighbouring Namakkal before his Karur appearance, rumours had it that both Vijay and EPS were keeping their alliance options open, sans the BJP.
For the medium and long terms, the propagated and whispered belief is that Vijay wants to run a water-tight administration like that of Jayalalithaa and maybe MGR, and less like those of Karunanidhi and his son Stalin, the incumbent chief minister.
In fact, over the past two years-plus, Stalin's critics, especially in the BJP/AIADMK social media have been taunting him as being 'inefficient and ineffective'.
In comparison, now after the Karur tragedy, the AIADMK-BJP alliance is sure to project AIADMK leader Edappadi K Palanispawamy as the best of the lot as far as administrative efficiency among the present crop of political leaders in the state.
The DMK, though possibly on the defensive, would spread the word that it is better to be a Stalin than a Vijay. Whether or not this argument helps retain the generally anti-establishment/anti-incumbency voters, who were against the AIADMK and the BJP in three elections since 2019, two of them barring 2014 as allies, this segment may have second thoughts before choosing Vijay for their new mascot and leader, who represented 'change' in a complex politico-electoral web.
Unthinking and inadequately advised as he has been, Vijay has lost the huge political advantage that his three rallies in quick week-end sessions had helped him win. Instead, in its place, his style of weekend politics is sure to come up for greater and sharper criticism, with both political and media opponents telling the voters, how the state needed a full-time chief minister, and not a week-end CM, or a CM who works a five-day week and may take two days' off like all government servants.
As coincidence would have it, Deputy Chief Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin, the DMK's heir-apparent, had taunted Vijay on this score,only hours before the Karur tragedy struck. He was only responding to Vijay criticising him on the one hand elsewhere, and also the DMK's controversial Senthil Balaji in his Karur rally speech without naming the latter.
In this background, the question is not how will the divided Opposition hope to exploit the Karur tragedy against Vijay and TVK.
Instead, it is about who will bell the cat, when, how and how far. And if and how Vijay responds especially if the higher judiciary or the state/central human rights commissions are also going to take cognisance.
N Sathiya Moorthy, veteran journalist and author, is a Chennai-based policy analyst and political commentator.