PMK: The Mango & Its Roots!

By Sanjay Pinto

The PMK that has been out in the political wilderness for a while,put up a show of strength at its Vanniyar Youth Festival in the tourist hotspot - Mahabalipuram. The party of former Union Health Minister Dr.Anbumani Ramadoss managed to rustle up a crowd of a few lakh Vanniyar youth as a sort of answer to Vijaykanth's DMDK party that eroded its vote base in both the 2009 Lok Sabha Poll, where Ramdoss' party drew a blank and the 2011 Assembly election where it managed to win just 3 out of the 30 seats it had wrenched from the DMK led alliance.

Although the PMK had all along insisted that it is not a party meant only for Vanniyars - a powerful community of traders concentrated in the Northern belt of Tamilnadu, recent electoral setbacks have forced it to go back to its  traditional vote base. At the Mahabalipuram gathering, party founder Dr.S.Ramadoss played to the Vanniar gallery by reviving old demands in a new meet! Reservation for Vanniyar Youth in education & employment, a series of protests between July & August, a fair caste based census and its pet prohibition call were the resolutions passed.

For more than a decade, the father-son doctor duo seemed to have had their finger on the pulse of winning alliances ; moving from one coalition to another, earning the party the nickname 'fence sitter'. But smarting from what the party called 'shabby treatment' by the two dravidian juggernauts, the PMK recently vowed to maintain a safe distance from both the AIADMK and the DMK. Does that ring a bell? That's just the sort of  detached innings 'Captain' Vijaykanth set out to play when he launched the DMDK. But the actor-politician who calls himself the 'Black MGR', realised his bread would be buttered by being in an alliance.Winning 29 seats in the assembly, many felt, was possible only because his party rode on the massive Jayalalithaa wave that swept Tamilnadu last year. The feat catapulted the action hero as the Opposition Leader; a role that soon made him a "villain" in the eyes of the ruling party and landed the DMDK out of the AIADMK led alliance!

Back to the PMK; these are tough times for Ramdoss & Co. The top brass is now mired in a criminal case in Tamilnadu. Anbumani too has been recently chargesheeted by the CBI in an Indore Medical College scam.However, in Tamilnadu, you just cannot write off any party. The PMK may not have won many seats but it does have its vote share among the Vanniars; not to forget women voters who identify with its anti alcohol crusade; which could tilt the scales in any close contest. One reason why the party, whose election symbol is the mango, is moving back to its roots. On the sidelines, there are soft targets like actor Vijay, whose film poster showing him smoking, are enough to stay in the news.