The defecting BJP MPs led by Chatterjee (with mike)

Already heading a government with a comfortable majority, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Ajit Jogi wanted a split in the BJP to get even with it for questioning his tribal status. The man he chose to do the hatchet job for him was Tarun Chatterjee, a maverick with Bengali roots but a regular on the Madhya Pradesh political circuit. Chatterjee started his career in Raipur under V.C. Shukla. With his strong roots in the slum sections of Raipur, he was a welcome entrant into the BJP in 1993 because at that time the party was looking to consolidate its urban base. He won two elections from there on a BJP ticket but was never comfortable in the party.

As mayor of Raipur Chatterjee interacted with Jogi, who encouraged him to defect. To beat the anti-defection law would mean getting more than a third of the BJP members in the Chhattisgarh Assembly to change sides. This he has now done. What hurt the BJP most is that six of the 12 defectors were reputed to be committed party workers. Ramesh Bais, Union minister of state for information and broadcasting, should be a worried man. As Jogi and Chatterjee make hay while their political sun shines, the BJP finds itself disappearing from a state it claims credit for having created.

-Neeraj Mishra

CONTROVERSY
Myth Over Logic

KANNAGI: The statue

When legendary Tamil poet Elangovadigal immortalised the story of Kannagi, he would never have imagined that centuries later his heroine would be seeking justice again. After a truck rammed into the pedestal of a statue of Kannagi-erected at Chennai's Marina Beach by former chief minister C.N. Annadurai in 1968-the Government had it removed and placed in a museum. Chief Minister O. Paneerselvam announced that it would not be put up in the same place because it hindered traffic. But opposition MLAs aren't buying that. They say AIADMK supremo J. Jayalalitha had the statue removed apparently because astrologers and Vaastu consultants had told her that it would bring bad luck to the ruler of the state. The story goes that the king of Madurai accused Kannagi's husband of stealing the queen's anklets and sentenced him to death. Kannagi later proved that the anklets were hers, and had her revenge by burning the city.

While the Government has set up a committee to recommend an appropriate site for the statue, the DMK convened a meeting of Tamil scholars and like-minded parties that decided to hold a "Tamil culture conference" on January 2 to have it reinstalled. The high court has been pulled into the controversy too, to decide on public interest petitions demanding the statue be reinstalled at its original location.

-Kavitha Muralidharan

Labouring for an Image

Divakaran

For at least 10 years now Kerala has been registering the least number of industrial strikes and lockouts in the country. Yet it has also been the state that attracted the least private investment. Studies have now pointed to the cause of this paradox: the bad image of its labour as a disruptive force. The seven-month-old United Democratic Front (UDF) Government decided to dispel this image as the first move to realise its promise of bringing in investment worth Rs 50,000 crore over the next five years. The new labour policy announced by Labour Minister Babu Divakaran says for the first time that gheraos by workers of factory managers and their families would henceforth be treated as criminal offences. The policy has brought in more industries under the head of essential services. It also says that the employer would be given all rights to recruit workers of his choice. This directly affects the most notorious section of labour, the "headload workers", who used to prevent employers from hiring freely and extort astronomical sums to load and unload trucks. For once even the opposition Left Democratic Front led by the CPI(M) is not objecting.

-M.G. Radhakrishnan