Welfare Schemes Are Her Unique Legacy

When evaluating her legacy, innovative welfare schemes, including Amma Canteens, have to be weighed against Jayalalithaa’s vindictiveness and lack of transparency.

Even as a sea of humanity was present to bid farewell to Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa on her last journey and top leaders were paying her glowing tributes, the electronic channels could dig out just two archived interviews with her. Both the interviews were over a decade old.

One was with actor Simi Garewal for her TV show and focussed more on her career as a film star and on her hidden talent for singing. The other was an incisive political interview with Karan Thapar for a BBC show ‘Hard Talk’. The rather unpleasant interview ended with Thapar saying it was a pleasure talking to her and she walking away in a huff after saying that she did not share the same sentiments.

She was perhaps the only chief minister in recent times who had never addressed a press conference or answered questions from media. All through her five tenures as chief minister, she kept the media at bay.

Yet the media went into a frenzy when it became known that she won’t survive and most of the electronic media stretched all resources to cover her final journey and to discuss her legacy in glowing terms. She remained an enigma for the media and for all those who had followed her career graph both in films and politics.

In both the fields, as per her own claims, she was a reluctant entrant. She was virtually forced into the arena of films when she was very young. Her mother was a small time actor and that paved the way for a highly successful career in the field. It was during that stint that she met her mentor and friend M G Ramachandran, the iconic superstar of Tamil films, who later ventured into politics. She had to follow his footsteps after his passing away.