'Pure force'? The bypolls are auctioning TVK's promise of change

“We are a pure force and will not distribute money for votes.” That was the promise on which the TVK collected votes in April. Six months later, the party’s own allies — the Left parties that prop up its government from the outside — say villagers in Madurantakam told them the ruling TVK is distributing the most cash of any party in the October 6 bypolls. “Everyone else is distributing money while we are giving only pamphlets,” the villagers reportedly said. If that is not the sound of a promise being auctioned, what is?

The charge is not coming from the AIADMK alone — though the AIADMK has petitioned the Election Commission with specific allegations, including cash distributed at Rettipalayam in Acharapakkam union for the TVK’s Madurantakam candidate. It is coming from CPI(M) state secretary P. Shanmugam, whose party contests Madurantakam and whose comrades contest Dharapuram, and who still extends outside support to the TVK government. When your own crutches call out your limp, the limp is real.

Consider the theatre around these bypolls. Two AIADMK MLAs resigned their hard-won seats and walked into the TVK, forcing elections on October 6 that nobody asked for. “Where was the need to resign? What was offered to them by the TVK?” Shanmugam asks — the question every voter in Madurantakam and Dharapuram is entitled to ask. A government that manufactures the election and then allegedly manufactures the mandate has stopped persuading and started purchasing.

This is the pattern now: test the waters, then U-turn when the opposition rises. Hindi on the signboard — suspended engineers after the outcry. A “reels government” for North Indian influencers, as the DMK’s Stalin put it. And beneath the reels, the oldest script in the book: cash in envelopes, pamphlets in the other hand. The TVK promised to end money politics; it appears to have merely professionalised it.

The Dravidian movement taught Tamil Nadu that a vote is an act of self-respect, not a commodity. Periyar’s rationalism asked the common person to think, not to be bought; Anna’s oratory asked for conviction, not currency. Every rupee handed out at a street corner is a small theft from that inheritance — it tells the voter their judgment is worth less than their hunger, and tells the candidate that governance can be subcontracted to the envelope.

On October 6, the voters of Madurantakam and Dharapuram get to answer the only question that matters: is their vote for sale? The TVK’s opponents are betting it is not. The tragedy is that the party once elected as the “pure force” seems to be betting that it is. A government that buys its by-elections will have bought its excuses for the next five years too.